


The Transtempus Penalty (RIREN // ERERI)

by Satan_Loves_Yaoi



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 1990s, A little bit violent, Bottom Eren Yeager, Dark Comedy, Dark Romance, Levi is a serial killer, M/M, Morbid, Slow Burn, The 1970s, They simply do the things that must be done, Time travelling beans, but we love her anyway, definitely an asshole to say the least, eren is an aspiring attorney, ereri, not much tho all things considered, petra is about as dense as a box of rocks, riren - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 36
Words: 162,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24518182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Satan_Loves_Yaoi/pseuds/Satan_Loves_Yaoi
Summary: Transtempus- adj. "across time." Using an experimental and highly controversial method of penalization, aspiring attorney Eren Jeager must go back in time to try to prevent a string of murders spanning several decades, committed by none other than Levi Ackerman. By traveling into the man's youth to provide him with preliminary rehabilitation, Eren begins to realize that things are never as simple as they look on paper.(I also have this on Wattpad as @Ackermans_Love_420.  Go check it out if you want more stuff I've written)
Relationships: Levi/Eren Yeager
Comments: 360
Kudos: 479





	1. Before We Get Started

**Hey guys! So this is my customary pre-chapter announcement to add this to your libraries, but with this one will also include a disclaimer.**

**DISCLAIMER:**

**This story will contain graphic and disturbing content, and is not suitable for young audiences. There will be explicit depictions of violence, and domestic abuse, as well as graphic descriptions of fictionalized violent crimes and homicide.**

**If that kinda shit triggers you, I recommend you pick another one of my stories to read, as I'm not exactly in the business of making others uncomfortable.**

**That being said... the controversial method of pacifism regarding violent criminals is a relatively heated, politically charged debate, even over something like the death penalty, and so the concept of going back and undoing everything and providing love to a killer is... at the very least controversial, and if that isn't your cup of tea, I AGREE WITH YOU. I believe that with the technology given to us in this day and age, and the inability our justice system has to prevent crimes from taking place in the first place, that committers of violent crimes should get everything that's coming to them.**

**Also, please note that the following chapter is simply a pilot. If the response is overwhelmingly positive, then I will devote more time and effort to the progression of this story. If not, I'll still write it, just for me and my inner circle of writers, as opposed to the general public.**

**If YOU like this story, please vote and comment so that I know to continue updating.**


	2. Prologue. 1996

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The year is 1996, and Justice Darius Zackly is about to make a ruling that will change history in the legal system, given that it doesn't fail.

"Your Honor, if I may, before the jury makes their final decision for the night," attorney Hanji Zoe said, lifting her little finger while she sat beside her shackled defendant, who wore a scowl that was far more remarkable than his orange jumpsuit. She pushed the fringe from her forehead, tucking any loose offenders from her ponytail discreetly behind her ears while she waited for permission to speak.

"Proceed," Justice Darius Zackly, muttered, raising his hand and gesturing for the exhausted lawyer to stand. They were in their fourth consecutive day of trials, each session running the majority of the day, only taking forty-five minutes for lunch, as opposed to the full hour, as there was too much to discuss to justify any time-wasting. Hanji could see the gilded light peeking through the tall, paneled windows of the courtroom, giving her a sign that the rain had let up a little, just in time for the sunset she was about to miss. And although that detail did not go unnoticed to her, she felt just as powerless as her defendant, held to the ebb and flow of the jury members while her husband ate another meal by himself.

"As the jury deliberates my defendant's insanity plea," she began tepidly, afraid that her client would try to negate her plea again. "I would like to propose a penalty, should he be denied insanity."

"Excuse me, Your Honor," prosecutor Dot Pyxis interjected before Hanji could even get a word out. "I would just like to ask, for the jury, why Ms. Zoe has such an adversity to properly punishing her client for his horrendous crimes? Could it be that her personal connection to the defendant is getting in the way of her ability to behave rationally?" Hanji clenched her fists at the allegations, and her client caught onto her shift in behavior, instantly feeling the hairs on his arms stand straight up as he bristled with a cold frustration at the prosecution.

"Objection," the defendant finally spoke, his voice escaping his lips with a raspy inflection, raising his heavily tattooed right hand to catch the judge's attention. Hanji cast a hard glance at her client, hoping to silently communicate to him that saying something sarcastic would not be advised. "Relevance," he muttered, before placing his hands flat onto the table once more, drumming his fingers in the buzzing courtroom while film crews silently waited for the judge to speak.

"I did not ask for a cross-examination, Mr. Pyxis," Justice Zackly said sternly. "Proceed, Ms. Zoe, though your pessimism may only cripple you in your defense."

"Well, he's already been convicted," she replied, turning to the jury with a small shrug. She knew that if there was any way to avoid the death penalty, she had to start subtly pandering to the jury _and_ the judge. "That part of the trial's over, but now that we're onto sentencing, I have a proposal."

"You may continue, Ms. Zoe," Justice Zackly yawned, raising an eyebrow at the camera that panned towards him.

"I think that if the jury wants to penalize Mr. Ackerman with the death penalty, they should first consider this alternative. There are three research professors out of MIT, Your Honor," she began, pulling a manilla folder from her satchel and slapping it onto the table. She had always loved that part of trial, feeling like she was some sort of officious lawyer by "slamming bitches with facts," as her husband lovingly dubbed it.

Hanji Zoe was a renowned defense attorney with a nationwide demand for her services, and played the _pro hac vice_ card to petition for several out of state cases, but she had never seen one quite like the one she was currently working on.

The defendant showed no remorse while he pled guilty, against her advice, on the second day, and pled the fifth for anything he didn't want to speak on. It was almost like he had a death wish or something, only ever speaking to damn himself further. While she had hoped he would be her very own OJ Simpson, it didn't seem like Mr. Ackerman had the same idea. Everybody knew he was guilty. Even if he hadn't gone to open his mouth, and he would have likely gotten life at the very least. It was only thanks to Hanji that the jury was even considering insanity.

"Relevance," Justice Zackly muttered, more than a little frustrated that the defendant's attorney was bringing something up so late in the day, but still her loud mouth persisted. He let out a sigh, allowing her to continue talking, shaking his head and wondering when he'd gotten so damn old.

"Just give it a second, Your Honor. But these professors have developed a device that attorneys like me can use to not only undo the deaths of the victims, but provide rehabilitation to my defendant before he's even capable of committing his crimes, and thus I would like to suggest the transtemporal penalization method," She explained, having spent several hours discussing the option the night prior with the professors that had invented the device. She promised the men free marketing and a test subject in exchange for their assistance in the sentencing of Levi Ackerman. "It has not been tested thoroughly on humans, as the lack of a willing test subject has been their biggest drawback in development, though it has been used successfully in crimes like armed robbery, and murder of the second and third degree."

Justice Zackly quirked an eyebrow up at the frazzled attorney, genuinely intrigued by what seemed like the proposal to open the defendant up to be experimented on. "I am aware of the transtemporal method, Ms. Zoe. You do realize that if I'm understanding what you're trying to tell me, you're telling me that you may be able to prevent the several murders and other heinous crimes this man has committed? Do you realize that you're suggesting that we legitimately play god with people's lives? Might I remind you that you and your client are under oath, Ms. Zoe?" He tried to remain unbiased, but the straight-from-sci-fi idea had a certain draw to it. He could certainly admit that it was an intriguing prospect, and who better and more hated to use it on than a notorious serial killer? He rolled the suggestion of preventative pacifism around in his head for a while, zoning out in his own thoughts while Hanji continued, his body and mind both exhausted while he contemplated the idea, perhaps his exhaustion fueling his motivation.

"So the idea for something as serious as several counts of first degree murder, is that we go back, try to provide non-invasive counseling to the defendant during his developmental teenage years, and prevent the crimes entirely by using all availiable resources to give him whatever he was lacking that turned him into the monster he is today!" she chirped, a little too enthusiastically for a murder trial, but she was more than a little excited to split the check and rid her old college classmate of his charges.

"And what about the other consequences, Ms. Zoe? Who knows what could be different if you try and delete several murders from history? These took place over the span of nearly fifteen years. Do you really think you can go back and prevent this man from killing?"

"Well, not me, obviously, as sending me back could prevent me from becoming an attorney, which would be detrimental to this case, and result in this penalty not even being used on the defendant," Hanji argued. "But I have a small team of people that are capable of travelling back to try and create strong enough bonds with the defendant, enough to potentially dissuade him from the choices he has made. We will communicate through cassette tapes sent back and forth across the time barrier, giving updates to one another on the progression of my client. Obviously, it would have to be somebody with very little personal attachment to, or investment in the case, so that a lack of bias would be displayed. Perhaps one of the interns?" she suggested, watching the camera move from her to the interning law students that she had taken under her wing for the semester. "I have several very promising future attorneys, and several who can look at the case impartially enough that they could go back and try to prevent these crimes without otherwise interfering."

"And if they can't?" Mr. Pyxis chimed in, looking in the direction of his adversary, but Hanji only shrugged, knowing that the proposal had intrigued the judge enough to sway his sentencing at least a little bit. She knew Zackly well; he was her home turf. She was not the out of state attorney at that trial, and thus knew exactly the things that would help to convince her Judge.

"Then I will personally be the one to recommend capital punishment, Your Honor. By lethal injection."


	3. Chapter 1

"Alright, babes," Hanji said, settling onto the edge of her expensive oak desk, happy to have won the Conditional Transtempus Penalty for her client. She was curious to see what the outcomes of traveling so far back and attempting to prevent a long string of murders would be.

"You heard what Zackly said," she grinned, pointing her thumb towards the door, in reference to the verdict. One law student would be personally elected to go back in time and try to foster a friendship with the man before the murders, helping to show him empathy, and to show him what a good moral code looked like. The judge had ruled in favor of the Transempus Penalty despite it being in a very early stage of development, knowing that the research provided during the execution of said penalty would help to boost knowledge and awareness of the new pacifistic method of treatment.

"We already have two very skilled forensic psychologists to go back and play the role of your parents, to give you off the cuff advice, if so desired. If you have any long term questions, those questions will be answered by myself in the form of recorded cassettes sent back and forth across the barrier. Your job is not to _kill_ the defendant, or to cause any harm to him; your job is to provide him with support and love in the hopes of preventing him from even considering a life of crime. If anyone does not feel capable of unbiased support for my defendant, your presence is no longer required in my office."

Three or four young law students, some of which I knew personally, immediately stood and began to gather their things. I waved goodbye as they left the office, certain I was capable of molding this man into the kind of person that doesn't break laws. I looked around the room and saw more of my classmates slowly filing out until it was only me and two other people sitting in the folding chairs and on the posh leather furniture in the office of Ms. Zoe.

"How will we be elected?" my best friend, Armin Arlert, asked timidly, lifting a thin, pale hand while he spoke to the award winning attorney.

"Well, Sweetie," she said, pulling a cigarette from the pocket of her pantsuit and setting it between her lips while she loped towards the window to crack it open before returning to her perch on the edge of her desk. "We're gonna test your aptitude in a few things unrelated to your major, like physical capabilities, and the like," she began, her words warped by the cig in her mouth, flicking her lighter and bringing the flame to the open end, lighting the paper and the tobacco resting inside. Taking a quick drag and removing the Virginia Slim from her mouth, she continued. "So, the three of you will be graded in four categories. First is physical, because although he will be a minor, it is on file that he was a fairly violent teenager, and anybody that would be unable to fend him off will be automatically eliminated. We aren't here to put you in danger, we're here to save lives, not rack up the body count. Second, is your mental strength. You will need the ability to make good decisions spontaneously, keeping Mr. Ackerman's best interests in mind with every decision that is made, even without my direct council."

"Well, I got all that down," the other student, Jean Kirschtein said, flashing me a quick smirk as his head swelled even larger than was the norm. I rolled my eyes and quietly tutted my tongue at my conceited classmate.

"Don't jump to conclusions, Mr. Kirschtein, you will also need basic psychoanalytical capabilities, enough to recognize signs of the onset of whatever it is that is afflicting Mr. Ackerman, and direct his brain away from the damage that it was doing to itself. And the legal requirements for this case is at least a 175 on the LSAT. If that eliminates any of you, you're free to enjoy the rest of your evening, maybe tell the gorgeous ocean "hi" for me." Hanji's hard brown eyes scanned ours, looking for any falsities in them while Jean stood, exhaling a loud, exasperated sigh.

"I got a 173," he muttered, slipping on the sportcoat he wore and trudging out of the office.

"Alright, you two. Who's it gonna be? Anybody wanna drop out? Last chance," she chirped, puffing on her cigarette while we stared at her, both of us at a relative loss for words. "I can tell you right now that blondie is gonna fail the physical part of the examination. Mr. Arlert, you are aware that your small build and inability to defend yourself could potentially get you killed before you're even born. Are you prepared to handle a potentially dangerous situation without the ability to overpower Mr. Ackerman? And Mr. Jeager," she continued, casting a glance in my direction before speaking again. "Are you prepared to be within Mr. Ackerman's exact homicide demographic? You fit the descriptors perfectly: you're a tall, skinny white guy in his twenties. Are you prepared to potentially be seen as a target by Mr. Ackerman?"

I felt my stomach drop as anxiety washed my system; was I really prepared to die for credential power? I knew that the amount of notoriety for participating in that case would either make me look really good, or like some sort of serial-killer-promoting jackass, which could be less than ideal for future clients, but even then, that infamy could end up with an influx of defense cases. I mulled it over for a moment longer, reminding myself of the very real dangers I was facing before nodding silently at the woman while she took a final hit from her cigarette and put the butt out in the ashtray she had resting beside her.

"Alrighty, then. The tests will take place in two weeks while you're both debriefed further on your assigned role in Mr. Ackerman's life by myself, as well as the two forensic psychologists before your test," Ms. Zoe said before standing and beginning to fold some of the folding chairs and stacking them in the corner of the room. "Custodial'll get these," she noted, more to herself than to either Armin or to myself before excusing us for the night. "I'm just gonna have you sign these real quick, basically just saying that you're aware of any and all dangers of going and interacting with somebody that potentially will kill dozens of men. After that, you two are free to go. I have to meet with my client after you two leave."

Armin and I both nodded at the woman while she placed papers in front of us for us to look through. After skimming the contents of the contract, I placed my signature at the bottom, potentially signing the warrant for my own death, while Armin proceeded to sign his own set of papers. In the papers were legal requirements in the two weeks leading up to the testing, basically stating that we be nowhere but our hotel rooms or the courthouse starting the next morning at nine a.m., for safety reasons regarding any protests to the method of penalization we were endorsing. According to Hanji, there was a large group of attorneys and civilians that were opposed to the 'hippy-dippy' 'kumbaya' method of pacifistic punishment.

After finishing up signing the documents, Armin and I rose from our seats and left the eager attorney's office, making our way outside and past security waiting with Mr. Ackerman himself, perhaps to speak with his lawyer. I could feel his eyes on us before I even knew he was with us in the corridor, and Armin must have felt it too, because we both looked up and scanned our surroundings in the very same second. When my eyes fixed on the murderer, I realized that he wasn't looking at the both of us, but just me, and, in between steps, I had to completely unfreeze my brain and body, the cunning fox of a man staring me down like I was merely another rabbit to him. He knew what my conversation with Hanji had been; he had to have known, but the mere thought of being eyed like I was his next victim made my blood run cold.

His face wore a small, crooked smirk, but his eyes wore nothing as they scanned me, taking in my entire body within the period of about a second-and-a-half. I was first to break the eye contact, entirely too uncomfortable by the gesture to even continue to look at the man. When I fixed my gaze back on the stone flooring of the courthouse, Levi Ackerman let out a quiet scoff through his nose, and he was shaking his head when I turned around to catch a final glance at the evil man.

Once we were completely outside of the building and back onto the busy streets of Fort Lauderdale, the balmy warmth of the springtime evening immediately clung to me and my friend, embracing us with the everpresent Floridian warmth.

"Well, Armin," I muttered, but my friend, Armin still seemed to be reeling.

"Did you see the way he looked at you, man?" Armin asked, his blue eyes blown wide in the utter shock dealt by the encounter. "That was so creepy."

"Yeah," I nodded, in total agreement with the frail looking blonde that stood beside me. Although he was my senior by more than a couple of years, he had gotten into law later than I had, and was taking classes while his wife, who I had never met, worked. "That shit wigs me out, dude," I said, my voice raising as my nerves spun a skittish lilt to my voice that I hadn't heard in quite some time.

"So, uh, we hail a cab and go back to the hotel?" he asked, his meek tone of voice telling me that he wasn't even inclined to take a single step, let alone walk the eight blocks back to the hotel, but I had never been to Florida, so I was insistent on walking back. If this was my last night of freedom, then I would use it wisely.

"Armin, how often did you get to go on a trip like this as a kid? Cuz I certainly never did. If you wanna take a cab, go ahead, but I am gonna go find a bar, and a babe to go home with," I replied, wrapping my arm around Armin's neck, corralling him down the sidewalk with me. "You know you want to. How much money do you wanna bet we'll find Jean?"

"I would bet a large sum of cash on that," Armin said, laughing a quiet, strained laugh that sounded more like he was trying to force air from his lungs than actually make a sound.

"Come _on_ , don't be such a puss in boots. Enough of the being scared. The minute we stepped outta that courthouse, we became free men for the night. Let's go see what this place has got to offer." I said, adding a griping tone to my voice, hopefully to annoy Armin into consenting to the night of reckless abandon. "Bang a couple of Floridian girls, ya know what I'm sayin'?"

"Yeah, I guess that could be fun, as long as I'm not just your wingman for the whole _entire_ night like last time. I just wanna have fun. You can hook up with a girl in the alley. Don't leave me at a bar at one-forty-five in the morning again." He shuddered at the memory of the night where I'd left a bar, so wasted that I'd even forgotten I'd come with anybody, and left Armin to fend for himself. As a grown-ass man, he was able to get home safely, but I understood his concern, and had promised not to do something like that again.

"I'm sorry, but that was _one time_ ," I snorted, ruffling his neatly distributed hair and loosening my tie. "I am not just gonna abandon you in an unfamiliar state where people do meth like it's a way of life."

"Well, that was a generalization," Armin tutted, folding his arms and rolling his eyes while we squeezed past crowds of people, all of them sharing the same excitement to finally be off work and enjoying their Friday night. "But I liked the idea of it, ya know, sticking together at bars _in a city we don't know_?"

"Lighten up, man, it was once. One time. Uno. No Mas," I explained to him while we rounded a corner onto a street with mostly pubs and restaurants, and locking onto the place I wanted to hit first, I guided my friend by the shoulders to my first prospect. It had a flashing neon light that read happy hour hanging in the window, and opening the door for Armin, we went in.

I paid for all of our drinks at that bar, Armin promising to pay at the next one, and so on and so forth until we found ourselves at a public park with no concept of time or space anymore. The air was no longer so inviting, and the music playing on in my head had ceased; I was instantly alert.

"I think we should go to the hotel now," I mumbled, snuggling closer to my friend whose head rested on my shoulder, arms wrapped around my neck like we were lovers, but I was too drunk to care.

"Right, right, but I'm sure there's a liquor store open. Maybe something for the road?" he asked, despite having puked in a bush not even fifteen minutes prior. I was a little worried, but I doubted the authenticity of my animosity. "C'mon, Eren, this was your idea; let's get it all out of our systems now so that we can do our jobs like professionals tomorrow."

"You mean like hungover lunatics?" I snorted. I wasn't exactly opposed to the idea, but I knew I would need more convincing to actually want to walk into the flourescent lights of a liquor store.

"We're already gonna be hungover lunatics," Armin grinned, his sky blue eyes glazed over and giddy while his fairly sunburnt cheeks dimpled with his happy smile. We had only been in Florida for five days, and I had no idea how Armin was so red. Despite my fair complexion, my skin always seemed to sport a tan rather than burn, a gift I was lucky to have, apparently, as his pink skin seemed to glow beneath the street lights.

"I'm kinda hungry, bro," I sighed, unlatching his arms from me and resting them at his sides before leaning forward and trying to get to my feet.

"Me too. Wanna go to Mickey-dee's after we get more booze?" He asked, gingerly climbing my body to help himself to an upright position, as a result of his inability to stand on his own.

"It's like you're reading my mind," I grinned, lightly pushing on his shoulder until he staggered backwards, needing me to catch him lest he fall onto the cement beneath him. "Fuckin' lightweight."

"Says you," he scoffed, his lax tongue warping his words into a drunken drawl while he stumbled after me, on the hunt for a 24-hour liquor store.

"Yeah, says me, nerd," I laughed, pushing his shoulder again and giggling when he tripped. "At least I can walk in a straight line."

"Oh yeah? You wanna go there, bitch?" he said, tipping his chin up and smiling a wide, lazy grin, making his face look like some kind of precious cherub in the glow of the street light while he lunged for me, tackling me to the grass of the park growing just a foot from where I had been walking, on the other side of the sidewalk, my intoxication inhibiting me entirely from keeping on my feet. "Fuck you, I'm gonna beat your ass on that physical evaluation."

"No way," I muttered, wrestling Armin and rolling on top of him. "Go fuck yourself."

"No, that's what I have you for," he snorted, reaching up and poking his index finger to my nose, before snaking his arms behind my neck and leaning up so that we were at eye-level with one another. "Bitch."

" _Whaaaat_?" I asked, wondering what kind of a joke he was making, but deciding to go along with it, regardless. "Your dirty mistress doesn't know what you're talking about. Please return in three to five business days, or feel free to call our offices, Monday to Friday, eight a.m. to five p.m. to book an appointment for a later date."

"You weirdo," he giggled, looking up at me with those hazy blue eyes of his while he fell backwards onto the green lawn.

"I'll bet you have a gay lover," I laughed, rolling backwards onto my feet, but Armin remained sprawled out on the grass, glaring at me silently while he lifted his hand for assistance.

"Dude, you need to learn how to take a hint," he muttered while I helped him to his feet.

"What do you mean?" I asked while we continued walking towards any signs of life. He let out an exasperated sigh and shook his head.

"Never mind, Eren," he groaned, trying to keep pace with me, despite those short legs of his. "Forget it."

"What? What did I do?!" I asked, placing my hand over my mouth and trying to smell my breath. "My breath smells fine, and I don't think I have any B.O. going on."

"I said never mind," Armin laughed, patting my shoulder vigorously. "Don't get so worked up about it."

"Did we find Jean?" I asked, not really remembering some parts of the night that had just transpired.

"Yes, Eren, remember? At the titty bar? Remember? We sent him with a cab back to the hotel cuz he called his girlfriend," Armin reminded me, but I was still confused.

"Why would we call him a cab for calling his girlfriend?" I asked, rubbing my head while I tried to contemplate an answer before Armin could speak. I needed to stop drinking, I thought to myself with a snort.

"Because he used the bar phone and started talking to her about how none of the boobs in there were as good as hers. Any of that ring a bell? Anything at all?" he asked when we came across a liquor store with a sign flipped "open" behind the glass of the front door.

"No, but I'll take your word for it. That's such a Jean thing to do," I snickered, holding the door open for my friend while we walked into the brightly lit shop. "Dumb bastard."

"You say that like you're some kind of savant, Eren," Armin smiled, while he went straight for the hennessy in the back of the store. Grabbing first one bottle of it, but eyeballing a second one, I waited for him to come to a conclusion, tapping my foot impatiently while he spent far too long trying to decide whether he wanted just one bottle, or a second one to hold him over until the end of the trip. Annoyed with the time we were wasting while we could have been on the prowl for a McDonald's, I grabbed the bottle from his hands, and pulled the one he had been looking at off the shelf and made my way to the front of the store, pulling out whatever cash was left in my wallet and pushing it towards the likely stoned store clerk, from the way her brown eyes were glazed over with a pink hue taking over the whites of them.

"Looks like y'all have had fun tonight," she muttered and I nodded, holding back a yawn. "Wanna hit?" she asked, just barely lifting her hand from the counter to reveal a small, mostly-smoked spliff from beneath her palm. "The security cameras haven't worked in months, and I swear those sprinklers are just for fuckin' decoration."

"Dude, you're my new best friend," I grinned, smiling at the girl while she pulled a lighter from the pocket of her apron, sliding it to me while Armin approached me from behind.

"You can finish it," she smiled. "I shouldn't be smoking on the job," she snorted. "But when did that ever stop me?" she pondered while she rang up the alcohol. "He can have some, too," she added as an afterthought, pointing at Armin.

"Have some what?" Armin asked, leaning on my shoulder while I took the small, white marijuana cigarette from the cashier, lighting it and taking a long drag before passing it to Armin. "Oh, yes, please," he chirped when he realized what I was offering, taking it and puffing on the last hit of the spent spliff.

"That's some good shit," I nodded, already feeling a little heavier after smoking the grass.

"I grow it in my backyard," she grinned, reaching for the butt of the smoke, wrapping it in a receipt and dropping it into the trash can.

"That's rad, man," I nodded. "Thanks." I smiled while she slid us back our drinks in a brown paper bag.

"No problem," she said, tossing her thick hair behind her shoulders and nodding slowly at us, a dopey grin plastered across her face. "Have a good night, y'all," she called after us while we left the store and wandered back out into the cool night, the contrast from the warm store refreshing on my flushed skin.

"Well, she was fuckin cool," Armin smiled pointing to what looked like a twenty four hour diner. Somehow we had not managed to lose our briefcases during the hectic night, and so Armin suggested we hide the alcohol in our bags while we went to go eat.

"Right? What a champ," I nodded while we slowly ambled towards our last stop of the night before we called it quits, calling a cab from there to the hotel, the clock in the vehicle reading somewhere between three-twenty-eight and three-fifty, but my vision was so blurred and spotty that I had no hope of being able to read it accurately. We slowly trudged through the lobby of the high end hotel, entering the elevator and returning to our floor, our bellies full, and both of us utterly exhausted. I had completely forgotten what hotel room was mine, and so Armin let me stay with him overnight, both of us drinking until we passed out, enjoying the last night of freedom before our self-inflicted disappearance.

I woke up to the sun ripping me from slumber, glaring between the crack in the curtains, forcing me awake, while Armin groaned and rolled over, looking at me with a dazed grin. I hadn't remembered falling asleep in bed with him, but I woke up and he was wrapped up in all the blankets and my half naked body was exposed.

"Did we hook up?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at the fact that I was so sparsely clothed. I'd never done anything with a guy, and so was confused by that prospect.

"I dunno," he sighed, sitting up and revealing the fact that he also was wearing nothing on the top half of his body.

"Was I any good?" I snorted, elbowing my friend in the ribcage.

"Eren, if you were any good, I'd remember it," he giggled hoarsely, the hangover drying his throat out.

"So then we didn't fuck, because I'm always good," I joked, coming to the conclusion that we had not, in fact slept together, simply because of the fact that the sheets were still spotless and I still had one sock on my foot, not to mention the fact that the belt on my slacks remained untouched.

" _Right_ ," Armin scoffed, taking a sip of leftover hennessy, wiping it from his chin while it spilled from his mouth. "Cuz you're such a chick magnet. I'm the married one, Eren."

"Whatever, Arlert," I groaned, flicking his forehead before standing and shuffling towards the bathroom in search of a glass of water. "You're just limiting your options."

"That hurt!" he yelped at my turned back, but I only laughed at him.

"No it didn't, you ninny," I called from the bathroom, gulping down water and popping an Aspirin from a bottle Armin had on the counter. They were an odd shape, but I thought nothing of it as I returned to the bedroom with a smile.

"You ready for this shit?" Armin asked, raising an eyebrow while I began to search for my other sock.

"As I'll ever be," I said with a sigh, questioning myself even as the words escaped my lips.


	4. Chapter 2

The cruel anticipation of the coming two weeks was more than a little unsettling, growing more so, the more meetings I had with Ms. Zoe and the forensic psychologists, Mr. Church and Ms. Magnolia. Armin seemed to only become more excited, while my stomach seemed to fill with more foreboding with each passing hour.

It all became so much that on the fourth day, I stood and left Hanji's office. "I can't do this," I muttered to myself, shaking my head and sinking to the floor in defeat while I leaned back against the wall. I had to get out of there. There was no way he wouldn't just make me his first victim. Hanji had followed me out of the room, but I hadn't noticed until she sat beside me.

"Look, Honey," she said, smiling a humorless smile, her lips pressed together weakly while she reached over and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. "I know it's a really scary situation, especially given your resemblance to the victims. I get it, Sweetie, it's tough. If you can't do it, I'll do what I can to swing the test results, but the physical part is one of the most weighted grades. It makes up thirty-five percent of your total grade. If he can't pass that, you are the perfect candidate, a little overqualified, if I'm honest. Your Associate's degree in psychology already puts you ahead of your competition by quite a bit. If anybody can do this, it's you."

There was a long pause after her words while I tried to come up with something to say to her. "But, what if I can't?" I asked, gnawing on the inside of my cheek while I contemplated how my words had sliced through the air like a blade through water, sinking us down further into the tense silence. "What if I die?"

"I think that if anybody has a crack at surviving, it's you, Eren. Your commanding presence and air of leadership may just whip Levi into shape," she said, repressing a small chuckle that bubbled up in her throat, using a single cough to cover it.

But that was simply not true. Despite the confidence I may have exuded, I was nothing but a shell, and the weak, blubbering creature living inside of that shell was petrified. I was petrified. I had never been more terrified in my life than I was to, of my own free will, waltz right into the sights of a future serial killer and proceed to either befriend him, or annoy him to the point that he just decides to terminate me altogether. "I can't do this, Hanji," I sighed, trying to take slower breaths and calm my breathing, but it was of little use as my anxiety spiked higher than ever.

"You're killing me, Eren, you know what the contract said. You still have to do the two weeks of debriefing with Armin, in the case that he fails the examination or you score higher than him. If he doesn't pass, you don't have much of a choice anymore," Hanji sighed, pushing my head to rest on her shoulder. I felt sick to my stomach, and Ms. Zoe was not helping.

"I'm sorry, Hanji. I can't do it," I repeated, pleading with her to let me go.

"Eren, by law you don't have a choice anymore. You read and signed that contract. I don't know what you want me to say," Hanji sighed, patting my back and hugging me tighter. "If anybody's gonna make it out of this alive, it's gonna be you, Eren. Close your eyes for a second." I did as I was told, lowering my eyelids until everything around me was curtained by blackness. "What do you see?"

"Nothing," I replied, letting out a sigh.

"Good. That's how you need to keep it, Eren. When you're with Levi, you're gonna need to focus on the nothing to stay alive. Be a little bit of a sociopath, okay?" She said calmly, squeezing my shoulders while she spoke. "Now, open your eyes, but try to hold onto the feeling of closing your eyes."

"Okay," I nodded, opening my eyes, but trying to continue shrouding my mind in darkness. Surprised at its effectiveness, I wondered where Hanji had learned an exercise like that. Becoming more like a sociopath was certainly something I hadn't learned in college. "How'd you learn to do that?" I asked, my voice feeling infinitely louder than it was, the quiet hall providing a stark contrast to the words as they escaped my lips, all the while I tried to hold the blackness, like I was flexing a muscle.

"A buddy of mine in college taught me," she said, and I wasn't sure if I had imagined it, but I could have sworn I saw her shoot a wink at me. "He told me that's what it was like for him. Everything was close, but empathy was unattainable. The sonder that the rest of us experience was a myth to people like that friend of mine."

"Well that's really trippy, Hanji," I muttered, wondering if she could have been talking about the very man that I was suddenly so afraid of. In his shackles, he was at least contained. Predictable. With the freedom of mobility in his teenage years, I wondered what that could mean for me.

"I hung out with some weird people in college. Guy named Erwin is living with a way younger man now, and I'm not saying they're doing anything, but I'm also not saying they're not."

"Ew," I muttered, closing myself off to that concept entirely. 

"What?" Hanji asked, wondering where she had crossed a line.

"Nothing. Never mind," I sighed, running my fingers through my hair with the black faded from my mind, my slip up pushing everything I'd been feeling back into me at once, shattering the simple, quiet apathy I had been feeling as it overflowed with stimulus again.

"C'mon, Babe, let's get'cha back in there. We have a lot to talk about today," Ms. Zoe said, standing and reaching her hand down to help me up. I took it, and followed her back into the room while we continued to discuss the rules of the upcoming penalty, and how exactly we were to execute it.

The rest of the two weeks were packed full of preparation for our final examinations, my heart and resolve growing weaker each day. I didn't want to die for some street cred, but at the same time, I certainly didn't want Armin to, either. Over the two weeks, I had realized that if I wasn't the one that was picked, then Armin could certainly be killed by the man, and I would have a lifetime of guilt to live with.

"Fuck," I muttered, calling to memory the cold, heartless eyes that Levi had used to stare me down in the hallway. "Armin, how are you so okay with this?"

"Imagine all the research we could do, all the lives we could save with this information, Eren. It's fascinating, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore one of the most corrupted minds on the planet." His eyes beamed with intrigue, and encapsulated the child-like expression his face wore.

I couldn't believe that I had even agreed in the first place, but there I was, up at six in the morning on the day of the tests, as ready as one could ever be to face his own potential demise.

Armin and I were closed off in separate rooms and given several written examinations with an hour to fill out each one. Most of the responses were multiple choices, but they were significantly harder than most tests I'd taken, asking my response to various oddly specific situations. At the end of the five hours of testing, I was mentally exhausted and now had to perform the physical portion of the examination, which involved wrestling with Mr. Church in an attempt to wrangle a foam knife from his hand before I had to run a mile and have a general physical examination. He dunked the edge in ink to emulate blood, and I was glad to have worn something that could get dirty like Hanji had recommended. I wondered who Armin had to try to get the knife from, but it didn't concern me as adrenaline flooded my system. 

I reached forward while Farlan raised his arm to "slice" me, gripping his wrist while he raised another hand to swing a fist at me while he struggled to finesse his way out of my vice-grip. I caught his other wrist and lifted my knee until it was just an inch away from his crotch, feigning toward the cheap shot that was open for me to take. 

"Wanna try again?" I asked, letting Farlan's wrist go and turning around to take a sip of my water while he took a fistful of my hair and pushed the foam blade against my jugular.

"Never turn your back on him," Farlan muttered, straightening up again and folding his arms while I turned around, swallowing the water I had in my mouth while I stared into his ice colored eyes. "Let's go again."

"Alrighty," I nodded, dropping into a lower stance while he charged me with his shoulder, knocking the wind from my lungs and tackling me to the ground, attempting to stab me in my moment of weakness, just like a serial killer would. I grabbed tightly onto his forearm and held my ground while his other hand went to my throat, placing it atop my windpipe, but keeping any actual pressure off of my airways. I writhed beneath his body for a moment, struggling to take control of the altercation.

"You'll only have consciousness for thirty-five more seconds. Clock's ticking," he panted while he continued to hold me in place, even as I struggled against his body weight holding me down. It was a risky move, but I yanked his wrist with the knife forward, towards me, while I leaned up and escaped the hand around my throat, shoulder checking him off of me, so that instead of straddling my hips, I was on top of him again. Both of us were sweating in the small room from the body heat and exertion, but I managed to grab the blade from his hand while he recovered, stabbing him with the foam directly into the stomach, laughing while I defeated him again.

"Gotcha," I grinned, climbing off of him and helping him up.

"A tip for stabbing people, if the situation arises," he said, standing and brushing off his clothing, the first time I had seen him in anything other than business casual. He wore a grey tracksuit, his ashy blonde hair swept into a small ponytail, but the shagginess of his haircut making it nearly impossible to gather it all into one hairtie.

"Yeah?" I asked, lifting an eyebrow skeptically while I raised the water to my lips, hoping he wouldn't try to sneak attack me. I could see from the ink on my skin and my clothes that apart from the one hit to my neck, he had more lethal injuries than I did, but I didn't say anything.

"If you need to stab him, don't stab," he said poking me in the stomach with the foam blade, "fillet," he clarified, using the blade to horizontally glide across my skin, so that if it were a real knife, he would have sliced off a slab. "It's easier to pull off in a fight, and it hurts like a bitch." 

"Right," I nodded, watching him put the knife back into the waistband of his pants. "Thanks, Dad," I said, copping a sly grin in reference to the fact that he would soon become my temporary legal guardian.

"No problem, kiddo," he jested back. After he spoke, a nurse came in to give me a brief physical examination, to make sure I was perfectly healthy. At her conclusion, I was doing just fine, but it felt like my heart was about to pound a hole right through my chest. Farlan picked up on my anxiety and tried to add some humor when the nurse took her leave. "Now you gotta run a mile," he snorted, gesturing towards the door, and pulling out a timer from within his shirt, dropping it in front of his chest to show me that I would be timed with the stopwatch once again hanging around his neck. He led me to the outside of the county prison, as we had done our exams in the interrogation rooms of the penitentiary that Levi was being held at.

"Alright, four laps around this block is a mile," Farlan grinned. "I'll keep pace with you," he said with a nod while Hanji left the building with Armin, who was covered in black splashes of ink, just as I had suspected he would have been, while Hanji, other than her hands stained with the ink, was completely void of an injury. I wondered how she had gotten such impressive self defence skills, but decided not to question it too much farther, as my stomach began to sink at the realization that I had likely beaten him in the physical portion.

"Ready?" I asked, watching him eyeball the timer and nod slowly, contemplating when to start the timer.

"Three, two, one," he said, taking a breath before he said, "Go!" and started the timer, both of us taking off while Hanji and Armin began about 100 meters behind us. I took a deep breath and focused on the concrete ahead of me, not the clouds of the rainy day, or the cars driving by, slowing as they wondered what the fuck was going on. We rounded the corner and passed the prison yard, and I couldn't help but notice the inmates, all exercising or otherwise enjoying their time outside of their cells, not at all bothered by the drizzle that slowly fell and coated everything with a thin sheen of moisture. 

I could see Levi amongst them, smoking a cigarette in a corner away from any guards. I must have caught his eyes as well, as he looked up and nodded at me, before pulling the cig from his lips and dragging the smoke through his nose while he exhaled, puffing the white smoke into the grey day. He held a finger to his lips with a smirk while he held up the cigarette with his other hand, putting the butt out in the dying crabgrass and covering it with his foot. He pursed his lips while he continued to watch me run, and caught my attention one way or another with each time I passed him until the mile was up, shaking his head when Armin passed me in the last lap. 

The feeling of being watched like that made me feel like I was the one in the cage, not him. I picked up the pace in order to escape his deadly gaze and rounded the corner again, grateful to be out of sight. Armin finished the mile nearly twenty seconds ahead of me, his little legs moving swifter than I thought they would have, but physical examinations were not a part of either of our daily routines, and so I would have had no way of knowing. Breathless and feeling completely out of shape, Farlan and Hanji escorted us back into the penitentiary and to an interrogation room.

Hanji and Farlan left to discuss our scores, promising to be back within twenty minutes while Armin and I waited in tense silence.

"How do you think you did?" Armin asked, folding his arms and pushing his blonde hair behind his ears while he eyed me with an expression full of inquisition. 

"Hell if I know. Farlan got me," I laughed, pointing to the ink on my neck.

"Well, obviously Hanji got me," Armin giggled in response, gesturing to his body that was covered in the black ink. "You nervous?"

"Are you?" I snorted, shrugging my shoulders in an attempt to deflect the only question I had with an obvious answer to it. Of course I was nervous. My heart hadn't beat properly in nearly two weeks, and I wasn't sure if it would ever beat right again.

"I asked you first," Armin smiled, but the worry in his eyes was evident, as even he started to lose his false, fleeting bravado.

"Well, touche," I muttered, taking a drink of the water that sat in front of us before continuing. "Obviously I'm nervous, Armin. Who wouldn't be?"

"Levi," he said quietly. 

"Exactly. The only people that aren't afraid of shit like this, are the people that cause shit like this to happen." I downed the rest of my water while Armin slowly sipped his from his waxy paper cup.

"You're probably right about that," Armin nodded, contemplation evident in his fixed expression. 

"I know I'm right, don't sugarcoat it for yourself. You're just as scared as me, and there's a good reason. It's cuz we aren't like him. We're normal. He's a murderer," I replied, folding my arms and settling further into the metal chair I sat in while we awaited Hanji and Farlan's return. I hadn't seen Isabel in a couple of days, and was beginning to wonder where she was. I decided that I would ask Hanji when she came back.

Speak of the devil and he doth appear. Almost as soon as my brain had registered my thought, Hanji and Farlan emerged from wherever they had been convening and sat opposite us, on the other side of the table.

"Okay, so for the written examination," Hanji began, interlacing her fingers and resting her hands on the table in front of her, letting out a defeated sigh. "Armin beat Eren by less than a handful of points, but the points that Eren missed were a microscopic part of his grade. It was legitimately a fraction of a percent. And then for the physical evaluation, Armin's smaller mile time put him closer, but as Eren won the hand to hand combat portion of it, he took that section by quite a bit. Out of one-hundred points, Eren scored higher than Armin with a ninety-six, and Armin with an eighty-nine. Armin, we'll leave you to say goodbye to your friend, as he won't return for several months in our timeline, and several years in his, before we finish prepping him."

"Right," Armin said, his breath shaking while he nodded at Ms. Zoe, who stood with Mr. Church and left the room. "Okay," he exhaled, wrapping his arms around my shoulders, but I was frozen in place. I couldn't move to hug him back. "Be careful, Eren."

"I will," I nodded, out of the breath I needed to speak audibly. I had been seriously hoping that Armin's lead in the written examination would be a bigger drop in the pool, but alas it made nearly no difference, regardless of how hard he tried. My ability to defend myself scored me higher than him, and I was frozen solid, petrified with fear that turned all my muscles to stone.

"I love you, man," he whispered, hugging me closer to him while he took slow, trembling breaths. "Really, take care of yourself."

I nodded into his neck, perhaps hugging my best friend for the last time, savoring each second I got with him, as the reality that they were numbered was crashing down around me.

"You're gonna do great, Eren," he whispered, pressing a chaste kiss to the top of my head. "And if you don't come back, I'm gonna raise you from the dead just to kill you all over again."

"Gee, thanks," I scoffed, not ready to let him go, and so tightened my arms around him, thanking my lucky stars that at least my friend was safe, but horrified now that I wasn't.

"Bad joke? I thought it was pretty funny," he giggled, his hand falling from the top of my head while he stood in front of me. His other hand rested on the top of my head, scratching soothing circles into my scalp, though his fragile frame was trembling while he held onto me. 

"Oh yeah," I huffed, rolling my eyes at him despite him being unable to see the gesture. "You're a real fuckin' comedian, Armin."

"I'm just trying to lighten the mood," he chortled, continuing to pet my hair while I began to relax my arms around his waist, my face sinking further into his abdomen, feeling his slowly quieting inhales coupled with his significantly less shaky exhales. "You're gonna do just fine. You have nothing to worry about. You'll be back in no time at all, and you can go about the rest of your life knowing that you made it. I'm proud of you, bro. You've worked really hard for an opportunity like this. You deserve to be the one to make this difference."

"Thanks for saying that," I mumbled, my quiet voice muffled almost entirely by Armin's ink stained shirt, but despite that, he seemed to understand what I was trying to say, because he formulated an eloquent response faster than I could have. His intellect was honestly a little intimidating, and I remember being baffled when he and I first got to know each other, because he had already gotten a master's in engineering before going into law school, despite only being three years older than me.

"I wouldn't be telling you if it wasn't true, Eren. Promise. You're gonna come back a fucking hero, and I'll be taking notes for you as long as you need me to."

"Thanks, Armin," I grinned, squeezing him one more time before finally letting him go. "I love you, too, by the way," I said when I got to my feet, giving him a brief hug and a pat on the back before he left the room, wiping his eyes before he walked through the threshold, Hanji and Farlan taking his place when he walked out.

"Alright, Farlan, I'm gonna leave you to debrief him with anything further that he needs to know, while I meet one last time privately before he goes under. And of course, Eren, for legal purposes, I have to facilitate a first conversation between the two of you, which I'm betting will be more than a little awkward. Toodles," she clucked, skipping out of the office while Farlan sat down across from me.

"Alright. Do you remember how the judge said you have to be a perfectly law abiding citizen while you're back there?" Farlan asked, leaning across the table and speaking quietly, like he was about to share some private information. "Levi is gonna think you're a fucking idiot if you're a goody-goody, so Hanji, Isabel and I have decided that the best option, as long as you can zip your trap about it, is for you to do whatever is necessary to get close to him. Your job is to dissuade him in any way you can, and that includes stooping to his level under my jurisdiction. You will not be able to convince him that you're batting for the same team unless you blend in with the way that he is. Don't disregard the part of you that's empathetic; don't kill animals with him, but as far as I'm concerned, some underage drinking and marijuana smoking was a way of life for him, so you'll need to blend into that scene."

"Right," I nodded, wondering how far I would have to push that boundary to get him to budge.

"Do you trust me enough to keep this information out of the public eye? Keep this between us and Hanji, will ya? And Isabel, obviously."

"Where is Isabel?" I asked finally, folding my arms at him and raising an eyebrow.

"She's already in nineteen-seventy-five. She left early to set up the house and get our documents and workplaces arranged. Obviously, you'll be paid for this pretty extensively, but you aren't to get part time work while we're there, alright? You'll get a small percentage of your overall paycheck each friday, probably only forty dollars, but you'll survive on that, considering Isabel and I will both be working. She's going to be a receptionist at the hospital, and I'll be working at the post office. We'll provide basic meals and whatnot; your cash is to be spent on things that will make you fit in better with the local teenagers, okay? So, think clothes, a record player, roller skates, that kind of thing."

"Right, okay," I nodded, taking in so much information at once that it was a wonder my head didn't burst. I legitimately would be treated like I was sixteen again, because as far as anybody in 1974 knew, I was sixteen. I knew I looked young for my age, but I had no idea how I was going to pass as a sixteen year old.

"Here is Levi's sophomore yearbook photo," Farlan said, slipping an enlarged black and white photograph across the table. "Memorize his face, because he was so elusive as a teenager, that you'll need to know exactly what he looks like in order to spot him in those crowds at the high school." His knee was bouncing up and down; we were both so jittery, wound as tightly as an 8-day clock.

I looked intently at the photograph. Levi had apparently aged very well, as the shape of his face hadn't changed at all, nor did any wrinkles mar his features, despite the thirty-some years that had passed after the time the picture was taken. His jet colored hair was as black as ever, his jaw drawn into an unamused scowl and his frigid eyes the same as ever, chilling me to the bone, even in just an old photograph.

"He'll be easy to find," I muttered, looking at the white tee shirt he wore, the sleeves rolled up and likely concealing a pack of cigarettes from the photographer. Around his neck, he wore a set of dog tags and had both of his ears pierced, small diamond studs twinkling as they caught the light of the camera. He already had a tattoo snaking its way from the collar of his shirt and up his neck, and his undercut was cropped so closely to his head that I would have thought he was bald on the sides of his head if it wasn't for the very light shadow his black hair growing back had provided.

"You sure?" Farlan asked, scrutinizing the photograph. "It's a big high school."

"I'll find him," I assured Farlan. "I'm sure he's certainly one of the most unique looking people there. Every generation, teenagers are the same. They still follow trends and shit, so the outliers tend to stand out anyway. If I showed up with black eyeliner to work, well, first of all I'd probably lose my job," I scoffed, a little embarrassed for even bringing that up as an example. "But I'd certainly stick out among my coworkers, right?"

"I suppose you're right," Farlan hummed, biting onto the back of his knuckle while he contemplated my words. "He would certainly contrast with social norms. Nowadays, he'd be in a punk rock band, don't'cha think?" He chuckled, staring intently at the old picture.

"Totally," I exhaled, my heart running like a jackhammer in my chest, drilling blood through my veins and arteries too quickly for comfort. We were talking so casually about a man that legitimately killed dozens of people.

"And remember, the first murder took place the week of his nineteenth birthday, so we will all need to stick around that long. And he'll be a year older than you, because he was held back a year at the end of that school year," Farlan explained, tapping the picture with his index finger. "And for the record, we'll be arriving in fall of nineteen-seventy-five. So you'll move seamlessly into school. And feel free to fail some classes, Eren. Remember, you've already graduated high school, college, and now you're getting your law degree at an Ivy League. You have nothing to worry about in terms of schooling, so if you need to fit in with whatever group it is that Levi belongs to, because on his record, it does say he had some friends, you need to do what you need to do."

"I understand," I nodded while Farlan picked up the picture and stood from his chair, pushing it in and grabbing the cup that Armin had used and tossing it into the wastebin in the corner of the room. I felt a part of my heart tear at the feeling of throwing away the last thing I had left of him, but I understood that it would be silly to keep something so trivial, despite the years I would be gone. 

"And because you don't look like either of us, Isabel is infertile, and you're my brother's son, but we took you in when you were a child," Farlan explained and my mind flashed with memories of my own parents, both dead by the time I was twelve, my older sister and I in and out of foster care and family members's homes the rest of our childhoods. 

"Can I call my sister one more time? She watches the news, she knows about the case, and what the ruling was, I just wanna say goodbye," I asked, while he closed and locked the door after we left the small room.

"Sure. There's a phone just around that corner. I'll wait right here for you," Farlan nodded. "Try to keep it under five minutes. I'm sure Hanji and Levi are waiting on us by now."

"Right," I nodded, letting out a shaky breath and pushing two quarters into the coin slot before dialing my sister's phone number, waiting while I was transferred from the prison phone network, out to the rest of the world. 

"Hello?" Mikasa asked quietly from the other end of the line. "Can I ask who's calling?"

"It's me, Kassie," I said, using her old nickname from when we were young. "Yo."

"Yo," she snorted, and I could hear the smile in her voice as she continued speaking. "How are ya?"

"I'm good, I just wanted you to know that I passed the evaluation," I sighed, knowing that my grade would break her heart, I was only able to brace myself for the impact.

"Oh? Really?" She asked slowly, and the smile was instantly sapped from her voice. "When are you gonna-"

"Probably like an hour or two. Look, I can't talk for long, because I have some more debriefing to do, but I just wanted to tell you that I love you, sis. And I'm sorry for always picking fights with you when we were little. I regret arguing with you all the time; all you wanted was to keep me safe, and I was too stupid to realize. If I don't come back I-"

"Shut the fuck up right now. You're not allowed to say shit like that," she snapped. "You're the only family I've got, Eren, and I'm all you've got. If I lost you, I- I-" she paused, overwhelmed by emotion for a moment before quickly regaining her composure and continuing. "Well, I won't even think about it. No use in worrying about anything, I'm just gonna be here, waiting for you, just like always."

"I love you Mikasa," I whispered, feeling daggers slice into my heart at the feeling of saying goodbye to my own sister. "I'll be back, okay?"

"You better, or I'll have to kick that midget's ass, and personally be the one to give him the lethal injection," she said, trying to feign a joking tone of voice, but I could hear the rueful honesty in her words. "I love you kid. You come back to me, okay?"

"I will," I nodded into the receiver. "Bye, Mikasa."

"Bye, Eren," she sighed while I hung up the phone. Once the call was over, I returned to my surrogate father who guided me towards the office where Hanji and Levi awaited our arrival. 

"Remember, that this is just to get to know him a little better, because we legally have to have you two meet, so try to refrain from conversing with him about his crimes. Make small talk."

"O-okay," I replied while Farlan paused in front of a closed door that I assumed was where Hanji and Levi were waiting for us.

First knocking on the door, and only opening it once Hanji invited us from within, Farlan did everything with a calculated precision that I could hardly pick up on all the silent cues he gave to Hanji. I stepped into the other room and chained to the arms of the chair was none other than Levi himself, known for not only the gruesome nature of his crimes, and the precision of his fatal blows, but for the sheer total of confirmed missing persons that he had admitted to the murder of. He was dubbed The King of the Dead for a reason, a reason I was all too familiar with after two weeks of studying him ceaselessly at the direction of Ms. Zoe.

He stared at me no differently than he had during our other two personal encounters, but this time, he spoke. "So you're the lucky winner, huh?" he scoffed, appraising me once again with those sharp silver eyes of his, narrowing them at me when I went to sit down. He was a rottweiler, bearing down on me like that, his menacing gaze stealing any words from my tongue before I even thought to say anything. "How fortunate. I saw the skinny blonde pass you, and I thought you were toast. Guess not," he sniffed, while Hanji waited stiffly in the corner, ready to intervene if needed. "My name's Levi Ackerman, but you already knew that didn't you? I'm much more keen on hearing your name, than hearing you say, "nice to meet you," and if you don't mind, I'd like to get on with it. I have a coma to get into for the next couple of months," he chuckled, straining on his handcuffs as he went to fold his arms.

"I-" I tried to say, but the words were caught in my throat, not willing to show themselves to him.

"Ya okay there, kid? You look at me like I'm some kind of murderer or something," he laughed, rattling the chains that bound him while I stared at him, the adrenaline in my system throwing me into a state of mild shock. "And for the record, if I wanted to, I could absolutely break these handcuffs, snap 'em right off my wrists, right? How's that for a visual? It's happened before, but I'm on good behavior right now. Now, what was your name?"

"It- uh- I-" I stuttered, still completely unable to formulate a complete sentence. I had to survive two years with this man, who I was becoming more unconvinced I could change with every glance and nuance we shared.

"C'mon, kid, don't be a brat about it," he purred, but his voice injecting venom into the air as the words escaped his lips. "I don't take kindly to brats," he said, lowering his voice to scarcely above a whisper, and I felt a shiver run down my spine.

"Levi, that's enough," Hanji snapped at her client, radiating admonishing energy towards the criminal in the chair.

"Sorry, sorry, I'll be nice, Hanji," he said, leaning as far forward as the chains would allow, an empty smirk playing his lips. "Crazy bitch wants me to be nice. Of anybody on the planet, you'd think she'd know that I'm not a nice person. I mean, right? Come on," he snorted, snapping into a visage of empty charisma. "But I must appease the all powerful attorney," he said a little louder, letting out a sigh. "So, let's try this again. I'm Levi Ackerman, and you are?" he asked, reaching his right hand forward as far as he could, gesturing for me to shake it.

Reaching across the table and taking his hand, I tried to calm myself a little, convincing myself that as long as he was playing nice, I could relax a little. "Eren. Jeager. I'm Eren Jeager," I nodded, flashing him a nervous smile.

"Well, ya got a decent handshake. I swear to God, everybody's handshakes are getting so weak these days. Like people are afraid they'll squeeze the life outta you with their hold on your hand. Nowadays, shaking hands with the young lawyers is like shaking hands with a dead fish, limp and sticky. Long story short, I appreciate a man with a good handshake," he muttered, popping the knuckles in his fingers while he waited for a response from me.

"Um, yeah, thanks," I nodded, entirely too uncomfortable to be focused on how firm my handshake was.

"Nice to meet you," he replied in a steady, unwavering voice, before taking in my expression as I fought against the social pressure to parrot his words back to him in customary introduction. It was not actually nice to meet him, and I couldn't bring myself to lie and say that it was. "Don't worry, you don't have to say it back. I understand."

"Thanks," I exhaled quietly, relieved that he didn't expect me to pretend like I was excited to make his acquaintance.

"Are you scared?" he asked suddenly, pistons turning behind his empty eyes; he was calculating something, but I wasn't sure what.

I figured that if I was going to be this man's friend, I needed to be at least somewhat honest with him. "Yeah, honestly, I am."

"Don't be."

"I don't think you're qualified to say that," I replied with a hasty chuckle as I instantly regretted speaking.

"I think that I am the most qualified to say that," Levi replied acidically, staring daggers into me from across the table. I could feel my stomach sinking with the anxiety around my poor response.

"It was- I was kidding," I said quickly, hoping I hadn't just pissed him off.

"Oh," was all he said, his monotonous voice clipping the syllable short and he settled into a comfortable silence. Well, comfortable for him. I, on the other hand, was horrified by the silence. I felt like prime rib to a starving tiger. I nodded at him, but he held up a hand to stop me. "I get it. It was a joke. We can continue, now. Damn, I never expected I'd be the one to carry a conversation before," he snorted. "Tough crowd tonight, huh, Fort Lauderdale?"

I let out a tense chuckle, feeling a certain lightheadedness that had lingered with me all morning. "Yeah, I guess so." It was a surreal feeling, trying to make small talk with him, trying not to think of the horrendous crimes he'd committed, though thoughts of the murders were never far away.

"Hey, thanks for not ratting me out for that cigarette," he said, knowing that at that point, there wasn't much punishment that could be dealt out to him for it, as he was scheduled to be at the hospital in less than an hour.

"Uh," I started to say, drawing out the syllable while I wondered how I would have even been able to snitch on him for it. "No problem." It wasn't like I was going to get a guard's attention in the process of running a mile.

"So, Eren, do you prefer cats or dogs?" Levi asked, very matter of factly for the circumstances. I hadn't been expecting a question like that, but did my best to come up with a vocalized answer for him.

"I- well- I'm more of a dog person," I replied, thinking back to my childhood pet, a large black mutt named Cabo, after my parent's honeymoon destination to Cabo San Lucas, where they had found the poor thing whimpering in an alley. 

"Why's that?" Levi asked, lifting an eyebrow, seeming genuinely curious as to why I was a dog person.

"I just tend to get along with dogs better. They're always so happy to see you, ya know?" I said with a shrug, practicing the eyes closed technique that Hanji had shown me and drawing out my next blink a little to ground myself in it. "I dunno. What about you?"

"I like cats. Cats don't give a shit. They kinda just do their own thing, and don't expect much from you. Ya know, I had a cat for a while in my twenties. Little calico named Maura. She was a good little cat. She got a tumor, and I had to put her down a few years ago. Not by myself, don't worry. I made sure to take her to the vet, before you go and call PETA on me." He let out a rueful chuckle at his own joke while I took a moment to process his words.

Before I could even suppress the question on my mind, it sprang from my lips, like my autonomy had been switched off for the moment. "How did you keep a cat when you were-" I froze, finally catching hold of my tongue, waiting for Levi to respond, a chilling smirk spreading across his lips.

"Off killing people? Well, first of all, I am no longer interested in the anatomy of small animals, and I wasn't by the time I got the cat, either, so she didn't have to worry about being a project of mine, and it was nice to go and find her after a long day. I dunno, part of it was probably appearances. I guess the rest of it was just personal interest in owning a cat."

I hadn't thought of that. I hadn't thought that somebody with a brain that twisted would just want to own a cat. I wondered if there was an ulterior motive behind pet ownership, but as it wasn't a dog, it wasn't like he was luring people to his house with it. Perhaps he was being genuine, and had just wanted a pet for the fun of it, though that concept was foreign to me after spending two weeks learning about his manipulation tactics. "But what makes you like them better than dogs?"

"Like I said earlier, they kinda do their own thing and don't bother you unless you want them to. Dogs aren't independent enough for me. They always need attention, even when I have none to give. Cats are also pretty good at reading people. If you're ever around a cat, it means something when the cat doesn't like you." Levi's eyes softened a little, but the windows to his soul still remained empty, despite the change in his expression.

"Did your cat like you?" I asked.

"Only cuz I gave the little bitch food," he snorted, but I was still not over how surreal everything felt. Here I was, talking with a murderer like we were on some kind of speed dating show. "She tolerated me other times, but that's kinda how cats are anyway. They don't love you, they tolerate you. And I can relate to that."

I felt a shiver run down my spine at his final words, wondering what would happen when young Levi could no longer tolerate me.

We finished out the meeting shortly after, several prison guards accompanying Hanji and Levi to the hospital, where he would be placed under a medically-induced coma for the several months it would take to successfully prevent the murders from taking place, while Farlan and I met with the researchers from MIT to send us across the time barrier. They carted in what looked like a door frame that was attached to some sort of machine that rested on a wheeling cart. There was a plain white door hinged into the jamb, opening it into the room, but although there was nothing behind the door, I could see what looked like the stock room of a post office through the doorway, piles of letters and packages stacked on tables and wherever else they would fit.

"We can see in, but they can't see out. To come back," one of the researchers explained, closing the door again, and pressing some buttons on the mechanism, before opening the door again, this time to the nothingness that rested behind it. I couldn't see the post office any longer, but I assumed the post office could see us, though it was empty when I had looked at it, so that was a comforting thought. "We just have to press some buttons, and you'll be able to walk right back through. We'll notify you of a time and place for your return as the date gets closer, but as of right now," he continued, closing the door and returning the settings to where they had been before, "This is a one-way-trip. You guys ready? We have some clothing for you to change into so that you'll quickly blend in with the times. And we also have to wait for the clear that they've put Levi under."

"Right," I nodded, while one of the other researchers passed two sets of clothing to us, handing one to Farlan and the other to me. They left us for a moment while we changed our clothing, keeping our eyes to ourselves until every part of us, down to our socks and underwear were changed into things that would fit the era. Slipping on my new shoes, I looked up at Farlan, who wore a clean blue shirt and a pair of high waisted white slacks, coupled with a brown leather belt that had a buckle far too large for it.

"How do I look?" he chuckled while a quiet rapping came down on the door to the room we were in. "Come in! We're finished."

The three researchers came back, and for the life of me, I couldn't remember what any of their names were. "Ya look like my dad," I laughed.

"Well, I would hope so," he snorted. "You're looking very, uh, interesting yourself."

I was donning a red and white, vertically striped button down tee shirt, which was a fashion choice I never would have considered before, and a pair of high waisted blue Levi's that were not cut wide enough to be bell bottoms, but the boot cut nature of them certainly gave that effect. I felt like I was my father. I wasn't born until nineteen seventy two, so the feeling of wearing clothes that my parents would have worn in their youth was a little unsettling, but I persisted nonetheless.

"Alright guys, it's time. Levi just went down. You'll have a week to settle in before school starts, Eren, so we suggest you use that time wisely. Perhaps immerse yourself in a little better with the culture. Buy some new clothing that isn't so horrendous."

"Right," I nodded while a brunette that I finally remembered was named Sasha fired up the machine again and opened the door for us, munching on a chocolate bar while she gestured for us to walk through. "Wait, does this mean I have to wear bell bottoms?" I asked, a humor in my voice while I tried to think of anything other than Levi, asleep in the hospital bed, waiting for me.

"Probably," Farlan nodded, putting his arm on my shoulder and walking through the doorway with me, back in time.


	5. Chapter 3. 1975.

As I stepped through the doorway with Farlan, the room we were in became suddenly much warmer, the end of summer heat wave in full swing, but it didn't seem as though the post office had any sort of air conditioning other than the small fan in the corner of the office. "Your aunt's waiting in the car out front," Farlan said, already falling into character, pushing the door open for me while we quickly left the back of the office, rounding our way around the brick building and towards the wood paneled station wagon that was waiting at the curb, the wheel just outside the passenger door elevated as the car sat partially on the curb.

"Hey, hon," he smiled, walking around to the driver's side of the car. "Why don't you let me drive us home? I might not run the car up onto the sidewalk," he smirked, opening the door for her and helping her out of the car. Isabel stood and pecked Farlan on the cheek in passing, playing the role of a married couple so well that it was a wonder that they hadn't even met each other until they had been selected to join the experiment.

"Sure," she said while he helped her into the slightly off balance passenger side. "Hey Sweetie," she grinned, reaching behind us in the seat and pinching my cheek. "How are you doing?"

"I'm alright, Aunt Iz," I nodded, playing along, drumming my fingers against my knee while Farlan drove.

"Where are we goin'?" he asked, looking to Isabel for direction. She pointed to an upcoming stoplight before speaking.

"Turn right up there," she replied, and Farlan did as was instructed of him, swinging a right as we approached the four way stop. "Alright, keep driving straight," she said, keeping her eyes on the road lest we miss a turn. Before long, driving down street after busy street, we arrived at our house. As Farlan pulled into the garage, Isabel turned around and began to speak. "Alright, Eren, I went and bought you some clothes, and notebooks and stuff for school. Here is your driver's license," she said, passing me a professionally forged driver's license registered to the state of California. I was a little sad to discover that despite it being California, it didn't seem like much of a beach town. It seemed more like we were in some kind of desert, the arid breeze frying my skin while we evacuated the vehicle and closed the garage door, hoping to lock out the heat as best we could.

"Yeah, and we have an expedited allowance for you, so you can decorate your room a little more thoroughly than Isabel has," Farlan said. "Feel free to take out the car, as long as one of us isn't using it."

"Right," I nodded, feeling a little lost at how normal everything felt, despite everything also being outdated by nearly twenty years. "Thanks," I nodded while Farlan handed me two crisp looking twenty dollar bills from a wallet that sat on the kitchen counter, that I assumed was Farlan's by the imitation driver's license resting in it.

"No problem, Sport," he scoffed. "Now get lost," he laughed. "Go get yourself something cool. Here is your wallet, with our phone number written on it in case you need to give it to anybody," he said, pointing to the number written into the seam of the wallet.

"Thanks, Farlan," I nodded, feeling a little weird about the fact that a man only fifteen years older than me was pretending to be my caregiver, while I had to befriend a man that was technically sixteen years older than me, all things considered. I decided that the best way to spend my allowance would be on a bike, so that I had mobility, but I knew that I wouldn't have enough money for a new bike, and as I didn't know much about bikes, I wouldn't have been able to fix up an older one, so I pocketed the cash and decided to save up for it.

"No problem. If you have anything you need to say to Hanji, we have a tape recorder. Just ask for it."

"Thanks, Farlan," I nodded, sure he was probably sick of hearing me thank him. "What should I do until school starts?" I asked, wondering what I could do to finish out my summer vacation in a new area, with absolutely no friends.

"I dunno, read a book? Go for a hike, or take the car to a movie?" Farlan shrugged. "I'm sure there's gotta be an end of summer party you can crash somewhere."

"Right," I nodded, suddenly feeling overwhelmingly bored. I wished I had Armin with me; at least he would have made things more fun. We could have found _some_ trouble to get into, but as it was, I had a very narrow list of things to do, because delinquent behavior was much less fun when it was solo.

I ended up spending the week doing almost nothing besides lazing around on the couch and watching television, more than a little shocked about the news coverage. I hadn't expected to be so intrigued by watching the news, but all of the past events were fascinating to me, as I remembered that it was the first time everybody else was hearing about it, but I knew exactly how the cold war would end, for example, and that we didn't have to fear attacks of nuclear warfare, but not everybody else knew that, and I had to remind myself of that pretty consistently as the news was aired.

Finally, the week came to a close, and I was given another forty dollars, adding on top of my previous allowance, and was happy to be closer to my goal of buying a bike by the time school started on Monday morning, far too early as if that would have changed over the period of twenty years. School was too early, regardless of what year it was.

On the first day of school, I woke up to the sound of my trilling alarm of my digital clock with the realization I had overslept nearly twenty minutes. Springing out of bed, I rushed around my bedroom, rifling through the foreign clothes for something that fit my style, but giving up and settling on a basic pair of denim jeans and yet another oddly patterned button down. I knew that before too much longer, I would have to go clothes shopping, because I felt ridiculous in my new outfits. Brushing my teeth and washing my face, I bolted out the front door to make my bus on time.

Once on the bus, I scanned the vehicle for Levi, but didn't see him, and thus took a seat beside a redhead that sat towards the back of the bus, her eyes closed while we bumped along the hot asphalt. I figured that she wouldn't be too much trouble to sit next to, as she was more occupied with catching a few more winks of sleep than she was with any kind of socialization, but as soon as I sat down beside her, her head snapped up, looking at me with a startled gaze before relaxing for a moment when she saw that I wasn't anything to be afraid of.

"Who are you? I haven't seen you before," she asked, sitting up and looking at me, her wide brown eyes encased by thick black eye makeup, matched by scraggly strawberry colored hair that hung to her waist, and she looked far too gaunt to be considered healthy for her age.

"I'm Eren," I said quietly, extending a hand to her, which she took and gave it a strong shake.

"Petra," she nodded, tugging on the sleeves of her broken in Harley-Davidson jacket while she pulled a cigarette from behind her ear and tucked it into what looked like a military grade combat boot, and I couldn't help but notice the grime beneath her chewed up fingernails while she hid the contraband, and the holes in the tread-on heels of her pants. "So, you new around here or something?" I took a second to appreciate the low rise lavender bell bottoms she wore, with thick black zippers running up the entirety of both legs and the short threadbare tee shirt she wore beneath her heavy jacket.

"Yeah, I moved out here with my aunt and uncle over the summer," I replied, hoping that I didn't sound like too much of an outsider yet.

"Bitchin'," she nodded, bringing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs.

"What about you?" I asked, holding tighter to my backpack, as though I was afraid I would lose it, but in reality, it was simply the anxiety of doing two years of high school all over again nearly ten years after I had graduated. "Are you from here?" I continued, wondering how I had even begun to interact with people my own age back in high school.

"Actually, I'm from LA, but my pops retired and wanted to move out here, so it is what it is. I've been here almost four years, but I still miss the beach sometimes."

"I understand," I nodded, looking around the bus, and finding that my clothing choices were not out of touch in the slightest, but in fact, nearly every boy on the bus wore some variation of what I had on, save a few boys in the rows behind Petra. "Moving is hard when you don't know anybody."

"Totally," she nodded. "I've been there. You know, if you wanna get bent with us during lunch period, you're more than welcome. I'm sure my people would be cool with you sticking with us for a while. You might not fit in wearing all that, though."

"Oh yeah?" I asked, lifting an eyebrow while she whipped around and addressed some of the other alternatively dressed boys behind us.

"Hey, Ollie," she snapped, throwing a crumpled piece of notebook paper at her dozing friend. A boy with deep frown lines and sandy blonde hair was hit with the paper. "Wake up, spaz."

"Huh?" he inhaled, scanning his surroundings as consciousness returned to his being. "Are we there?"

"No, idiot, we aren't, but this is Eren. He's gonna sit with us at lunch. He's new, so be nice, or I'll kick your fucking ass."

The boy rolled his eyes at Petra and extended a hand. "Pleasure to meet you, your majesty," he snorted, shaking my hand while he eyed his friend. "I'm Oluo Bozado, but people call me Ollie."

"Cool," I nodded. "Nice to meet you."

"Oh, boy, we're gonna ruin him, Petra," Ollie laughed. "He's so _nice_." I couldn't tell if I was supposed to feel flattered or insulted by the boy's appraisal.

"Right?" Petra smirked. "Eren, you're officially my project. How old are you?"

I froze for a second, reminding myself that I was sixteen years old. "I'm sixteen," I replied, far too nervously for my taste, but the outgoing ginger didn't seem to mind.

"I'm seventeen," she nodded affirmatively, her greasy red hair shaking in mats when she moved her head, and I could see darker roots peeking through the strawberry hair dye, almost like she had done it intentionally. "What kinda music do you like, new kid?"

"Uh," I paused, wishing I had done more research on music to actually have an answer for her. "I dunno. I keep my options pretty open, usually."

"Dude, like, you need to listen to New York Dolls. Personality crisis was _bomb as fuck_ ," she said with so much vocal fry that it was a wonder her vocal chords didn't snap. "So you're a sophomore, right?"

"Yeah," I nodded, happy to have seemingly found a new friend, and a group to begin immersing myself into.

"Us too," she nodded. "End of last year, some friends and I all got held back because we got busted cheating on the finals, among other things."

"Oh jeez," I muttered, wondering what "other things" could potentially ential. "That's not cool."

"Not cool at all, man," she laughed scornfully. "So what'd you do over the summer, then?" she asked, putting me on the spot yet again. Wanting to be as honest as possible without giving myself away, I responded only that I had done a lot of drinking, which was not necessarily a lie. I had done enough drinking that night with Armin to constitute an entire summer's worth. Petra nodded silently while Ollie leaned forward and rested his chin on the back of the bench Petra and I were seated on, continuing to probe me about my most recent parties until he was convinced that I was being truthful.

"That's bomb, ya know, Petra, maybe he could hang with us. I had my doubts, but he seems pretty tight," Ollie said, patting my shoulder half-heartedly.

"We'll see how he handles the jelled out symptoms before we make a final decision," Another girl, snuggled next to Oluo muttered, chewing on her fingernail while she looked up at me, shaking out her wild, shoulder length bleach blonde hair. I had no idea what 'jelled out' was, and so wasn't sure what the girl was insinuating. "I'm Riko."

"Cool," I nodded, hoping I didn't look like a fool. We arrived at school, and I discovered that Petra and I were in a lot of the same classes. As I filed into my math class, I found Levi, sitting towards the back of the class, but decided against approaching him. I couldn't just walk up and start talking to him. I followed Petra, not realizing she was marching straight up to the killer himself.

"Sup, dude? How was your summer?" she asked, folding her arms at Levi while I stood quietly behind her.

"Decent. I dig those threads, Ral," Levi replied, folding his arms at the girl that stood over him, now leaning over his desk. I watched as the cameo profile of a woman's face dangled from the black velvet choker she wore. "Those zippers are pretty bomb," he observed, pointing out the black zippers on her pants with his little finger.

"Thanks," she grinned, flashing her teeth at her friend that I had to remind myself was a serial killer. Apart from his abrasive exterior, he didn't seem socially inept in any manner, if a little odd looking in contrast to the rest of the class. His hair was shaved down to a little more than a five o'clock shadow everywhere but the top of his head, where it hung just past his ear. "We gotta party down, soon, you in?"

"There gonna be any booze?" he smirked, unfolding his arms and lifting an eyebrow, rubbing his clean shaven chin while he eyed her expectantly.

"For sure," Petra nodded. "Friday night?"

"I have to wait that long?" he said, scoffing as the words escaped his lips. He wore a tight black tee-shirt coupled with a pair of dark blue bell bottoms. He twirled one of his earrings between his index finger and his thumb while he waited for her response.

"I'll make it worth your while," she said, pursing her lips while he considered her offer. "Eren, you in? This is Eren, by the way," she said, pointing at me while Levi threw a quick nod in my direction, acknowledging my existence.

"I'll be there," I nodded meekly, unsure of how I would interact with the boy that sat in front of me without seeming like some kind of freak. I had to make it happen naturally, or I doubted he would open up.

"Sweet," Petra beamed, wrapping her arm around my neck and walking with me to two occupied desks. "Beat it, dweebs. Those are our seats," Petra said to two girls that seemed too afraid of her to try and protest. They silently gathered their book bags and found other seats. In that moment, watching as Petra flexed all of the power that she had, I realized that I had mistakenly become acquainted with one of the most influential figures in the school. I held her chair for her, pushing it in while she sat down, propping her feet up on the desk while she picked at her teeth with a thin, wooden toothpick that seemed to appear from thin air. "A real gentleman," she snorted while I sat down at the desk beside her. "Those are hard to come by these days."

"Oh yeah?" I asked, still reeling at all of the attention she was giving me, despite being new, and pretty weird looking for somebody trying to pose as a sixteen-year-old boy.

"Unfortunately," she nodded, the classroom chatter dying down as soon as the teacher stepped into the room.

"Petra, feet off the desk. You know better, you've been in this class before," the teacher snapped, before standing at attention in front of the classroom. Petra let out a long sigh and pulled her feet from the desk, her eyes fixed on the teacher the entire time, glaring at him with an impatient ferocity I had never seen used before. "I am Mr. Peterson," he began, before taking roll and having us stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, which Petra certainly did not take seriously, standing and folding her arms instead of placing her hand over her heart. I had to remember that tensions were still high as the Vietnam War had just gotten over with, and a lot of people were still very upset about it, and rightfully so: more than 58,000 of our boys were killed overseas in that war. People had a right to be upset.

"The pledge is bullshit," Petra muttered, leaning in closely and lowering her voice to a whisper when we sat down again. "That kid we were talking to? Levi? His uncle was killed in action."

"Jesus," I muttered, not having known that prior to her telling me, despite thinking I had a pretty good idea of Levi's life. I supposed there was only so much I could know without actually talking to him, but I hadn't realized that I would miss something huge like that.

"Yeah. It's really shitty," she said, her voice quiet and raspy, and unimpressed by the flag in our classroom.

"Yeah," I nodded, finally settling my nerves down a little, enough to pay attention to my class as the teacher began to lecture us on a part of mathematics I hadn't even thought about in years. I was a little rusty, to say the least, but despite that, I managed to make it through the class, and all the other ones that led up to lunch hour. Petra found me scanning the cafeteria for somewhere to sit and guided me over to her table.

"You're with us, remember?" She grinned, plopping her tray onto the table and taking a seat, patting the spot next to her on the bench, which I took. "Where's Ackerman?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow at his absence.

"Who's gonna go get him?" Oluo asked, craning his neck to scan the influx of students still pouring into the cafeteria.

"Send the new kid," Riko scoffed, taking a sip of her coca cola and jutting her chin out at me.

"Do you remember what Levi looks like?" Petra asked, turning to me and smiling a lazy grin.

"Yeah," I nodded.

"Go find him. If he's not at the back of the school, just come back. Means he's already split for the day," Petra sighed while I stood from my seat. "I'll save your spot, dude."

"Cool," I nodded, leaving the cafeteria and slinking down the quiet hallways while I searched for an exit to the fortress of classrooms, finally making my way out one of the back doors and around a corner, scanning the surroundings for a single soul, let alone the one person I was looking for. I finally found the dark haired boy sitting between two large air conditioning units, the loud whirring of the machines keeping him from hearing me approach. Once I was close enough, however, he looked up and blew smoke that he'd been holding in his mouth in the direction of the AC unit to his left.

"Wanna hit of this doobie?" he asked, offering the joint up to me. "Careful, it's hash."

I felt a little uncomfortable taking a hit of something with opiates crumbled into it, but I needed to show him that I was trustworthy, and I knew that when I was in high school, I gained trust with people that I did drugs with faster than those that I didn't. Sitting down with a sigh, I took the joint from his hand and took a quick hit of it before passing it back to him.

"Eren, right?" he asked, his hard silver eyes fixing onto mine and leaving me with no response for him. I looked out at the hot, sunny day, watching the heat ripple from the ground, warping the air around the track loop. I nodded wordlessly.

"Cool," he nodded, snorting when I looked away from him, just like he'd done in the courthouse twenty years later. "How old are you?"

"Sixteen," I replied, a little more confidently than I had said before.

"Right on," he muttered, an unenthusiastic drone to his voice that I couldn't keep my mind off of. "So, Petra's already made you her bitch, I see."

"I dunno, I guess. She's been nice," I nodded, still confused as to how she could be so warm to a total stranger. "She wants you back at the cafeteria. She sent me to go get you."

"Well, you can go back, if you want. I'll be out here. I'm not really digging the idea of the cafeteria at the moment," Levi responded monotonously, and I began to realize that that was how he spoke, regardless of the subject. He had this blase disinterest about him, even when he was talking with Petra about the party. He sounded like he could either take it or leave it, despite his objectively enthusiastic words.

"I can wait out here for you," I replied, growing more uncomfortable with the concept as I began to voice it, but not willing to take it back.

"Nah," Levi replied, shaking his head slowly, the intonations of his voice not even shifting in the slightest from the unnerving mutter he was accustomed to. "I need some time to think."

"About what?" I asked, wondering how far I could extend the offer of friendship without overstepping my bounds.

"None of your business, brat," he snorted, taking another hit of the joint and pointing towards the door I had come from. "I gave you a hit. What more do you want? You can leave, now." Apparently I had reached my limit, and so standing with a silent nod, I walked away from the boy while he finished his spliff by himself. I had a long way to go if I was going to be this guy's friend.


	6. Chapter 4

As the week ticked by, I grew more and more antsy about the party so that by the time Friday evening rolled around I was practically shaking with anxiety. I wasn't sure why I was so freaked out, but the night was charged with a certain anticipation that I couldn't manage to shake. We had not heard from Hanji yet, but we were sure that a cassette was coming soon.

I had given Petra my address, so that she could pick me up, as my aunt was working a late shift, and wasn't due home until after the party had started. She had offered me a ride in exchange for help with setting everything up and taking everything down.

I heard her horn honking outside of my house and was surprised to find her driving a cherry red Trans Am. I hadn't pegged her as the type to have such a nice car in high school, but was impressed nonetheless.

"C'mon, Eren," she called from the window, before cranking it shut and unlocking the door for me. "So, we gotta go get Levi, cuz he doesn't have a ride. Yet. He's working on that bike in shop class, but it's not anywhere close to being done," Petra explained, putting the car into first gear and beginning down the road. "He said he'd be at the library, so that's where we're headed."

"Sounds good," I nodded, wondering why Petra didn't just show up to Levi's house like she'd done with me, but then before I could ask the question, I remembered that he had stopped living at home when he was almost sixteen. Perhaps he wasn't telling anybody where he was living for a reason. Perhaps he wasn't living anywhere in particular, just wherever he could.

Petra pulled up to the library and I got out of the passenger seat to push it forward, allowing access to the back row. Petra parked the vehicle and climbed out of it as well, leaning against her car while we waited for her friend. He emerged from the public library after another minute or so and slowly made his way to the car, wearing the same dark tee-shirt that he had worn the day I met him, and the dog tags hanging from his neck only accentuated the tattoo that peeked through the collar of his shirt, the silver colored beads providing a stark contrast to the shaded black wing.

"Hey, dude," Petra smiled, rushing up and wrapping her arms around Levi, who stood stiffly until she released him. He brushed off his shirt when she pulled away and climbed into the backseat. I pushed the passenger seat back into place and we piled back into Petra's muscle car. "Wanna beat the drag for a bit before we head out?"

I was confused by the question, so I kept my mouth shut, waiting for Levi to answer. "Nah, I say we just book out there, get all set up. Like, there's not much to do, and people are gonna start showing up soon."

"You're right about that," Petra sighed while she turned onto the main road and began to drive out of town.

"Where is this party?" I asked, raising an eyebrow as I realized that we couldn't possibly be driving so far out of town to simply arrive at her house.

"An old make out spot from a million years ago that nobody really goes to anymore. Story is that a couple went there and the guy put the car in neutral instead of park by accident and they rolled off the hill and into the ravine. Lotta people say it's haunted," Petra replied, steadily increasing the speed of her car until everything was whirring past us at an alarming rate. "Wanna see how fast this baby can go?"

"Hell yeah," I grinned while she pressed her foot harder onto the gas pedal, switching gears while the engine put forth more inertia, building speed. The sinking sun cast long shadows over the road while our car flew over it, and I couldn't help but appreciate the temporary golden lighting it poured into the atmosphere as it continued to set. I took in my surroundings while Petra let out whoops and hollers at her ever climbing speed that pushed us back against our seats as the car accelerated.

Everything seemed to slow down the faster Petra drove, and I looked at the glittering smile on Petra's face. I glanced back to the pure stoicism presented in Levi's expression, while he looked out the window and folded his arms. He didn't seem to hate it, but he certainly didn't love it, either, and it was the quiet indifference about him that seemed to chill me, even when that wasn't in the front of my mind. She maxed out her car at 120 before finally beginning to slow down again.

"Well, that was bomb as fuck," she breathed, slowing back down within the speed limit.

"Totally," I nodded, taken back from the ethereal realm that my mind had been in, to reality as she began to drive at less than half the speed she'd been going when she maxed out. "Good job not killing us."

"I do it all the time. You got nothin' to worry about," she smiled as she made a turn that was far too sharp for my comfort, but as it did not result in an accident, I brushed it off. "Right, Levi?"

"I mean statistically it's unlikely, but that doesn't mean that you're not the exception to the rule," he replied coldly, still staring out the window.

"I like the honesty, man," Petra said, copping a smirk at the extent of her painfully quiet friend's vocalization for the night. She was driving up a small embankment and turning into what looked like a gravel parking lot before she looked back at Levi again. There was already a rusty Ford pickup truck parked at the spot that Petra fearlessly pulled up next to. She sprang from the car and knocked on the window of the truck. "Are you decent? We're here."

The window rolled down and revealed the messy blonde hair of Oluo popping out of the driver's window. "Yeah, alright," he replied, and Riko clambered out of the passenger seat, dropping to the ground from the high suspension and landing gracefully on her feet before racing to the bed of the truck and climbing into it. There seemed to be a small building at the south side of the vista, but I assumed it was just a toilet, and climbed out of the car, reaching back to help Levi out. He brushed my hand away and climbed out of the backseat himself, repositioning the seat and gratefully accepting a beer that Riko passed to him from the green metal cooler that rested in the bed of the truck.

"Want one, new kid?" she asked, holding up a brown bottle and tossing it to me when I nodded. "Catch!" she called, and her eyes grew wide when she realized that she'd just thrown a glass bottle. Luckily I caught it before it could do any damage, and popped the cap off with the bottle opener on Petra's keychain. "Good catch, new kid."

"I think New Kid has a name," Levi muttered, taking a drink from his beer while he stared down Riko.

"Well, shame on him," Riko laughed, leaning back against the closed tailgate while Oluo pulled small camping chairs from the back row of his truck, setting them in a circle around what looked like the ghost of a fire pit. The rocks were a little out of place, but he was quick to fix up the pit and begin stacking logs within.

"Isn't it illegal to just burn shit like this?" I asked, looking at Petra, who was watching Ollie put kindling into the bottom of his flammable masterpiece.

"Learned how to do that in boy scouts!" he grinned, pulling a lighter from his flannel shirt and lighting the small sticks.

"Eh, it isn't like anybody's stopped us before," Petra shrugged, her thin white shirt rustling in the gentle breeze while she shifted her weight between her hips and it became clear to me that she wasn't wearing a bra, but that seemed to be a sign of the times. "Like I said, people are kinda scared to come out here now, so the fuzz doesn't really hit this spot very often."

"Fair enough," I nodded, deflecting my eyes from her chest and focusing on something far more captivating. I was entranced by the flickering fire in the pit, growing as it caught the larger logs that Oluo coaxed into the flame with a stick. Riko hopped the tailgate and darted to Ollie's side, squatting down and watching him prod the burning logs while Levi took a seat in one of the chairs, gulping down the rest of his beer and setting the empty bottle on its side at his feet.

After about fifteen minutes, cars began to pull in and wiley teenagers began to climb out of the vehicles, some even hopping through the windows as they brought more drinks and food to the party, one group of kids carrying at least ten boxes of pizza. I wondered when Petra had even had the time to invite that many people, but figured that word would have gotten around quickly if underage alcohol consumption was part of the invite.

Eventually Oluo and Petra began to amble their way around the growing cluster of students, specifically to the ones that had driven there, and although I wasn't sure what was going on, each driver returned to their car and started their engines, but I realized after a moment that they were all tuning their stereos to the same channel and cranking up the volume.

The music enveloped all of the other chatter amongst the party goers and several of the more outgoing girls began to dance to the Don McLean song that played, swinging their arms in time with the music and beginning to formulate dance routines to the beat.

"Bye, bye, Miss American Pie!" the girls chanted, while some of the boys stood and were swallowed into the growing crowd of dancers as more cars pulled up and switched their radios before evacuating their vehicles. "Drove my Chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry!"

"Levi, c'mon," Petra exclaimed, taking Levi's hand and dragging him after her into the small mob. "I know you got moves. Get down with me," I heard her shout before her voice was drowned out by the music that increased in volume as more cars pulled up. I kept my eyes on the pair as they moved about the dance floor, Petra grinning wildly while Levi twirled her like she was a top, before freezing and dipping her so low, I thought he'd drop her. His eyes were fixed on her the entire time and his jaw was set in focus on the precision of the dance moves he was pulling off.

My eyes widened as he continued to keep time with the fast paced song that blew from the speakers of the cars, but he wasn't focused on anything outside of the bubble of dancers. I held my breath while he lifted Petra by the waist and tossed her into the air before catching her and twisting his body until her feet touched the ground behind him, dipping her even further than before. She was so close to the gravel that her long hair pooled on it beneath her head, but he didn't for a second let her touch the ground, continuing to dance with her until the song closed out. Several people were crowded around them, murmuring quiet compliments, taken aback by Levi's skill set.

"Good enough?" he asked her, looking up at me for the first time since he had gone to dance. I was sure I was gawking like a fool, and quickly composed myself while his eyes traveled the entirety of my body once more.

"Even better than good enough," she giggled, pushing her hair behind her ears and resting her chin on his shoulder from behind him, waving me over to where they stood at the edge of the designated dancing zone. "C'mon, Eren. Your turn!"

I let out a pessimistic scoff while I approached the pair. "I couldn't throw you in the air like that." I watched as Petra shook her disturbed hair out, shrouding her face in a glowing red halo. Levi's hair had also been fairly mussed by all of the dancing, I realized when he reached up to drag his fingers through it, putting it back into place.

"Yeah, I know," she laughed. "There are very few people that can toss me like Levi can. Any time there's a shindig like this, I make him throw me around."

"She likes to show off, if you couldn't tell," Levi snorted, folding his arms and shifting his weight to one of his legs.

"Aw, come on, I'm not that bad," Petra said, a whiny inflection dragging out the vowels in her words while she spoke.

"It's pretty bad," he said, lifting his upper lip into a sneer while he continued to look at me. "But you're not a bad dance partner, so I'll give you that. Very malleable," he noted. "You got her?"

I nodded at him, grateful that the next song was a slower one that I could get away with just swaying back and forth for the duration of, but I changed my mind as I began to recognize the lyrics.

"Good," he replied quietly before slinking off to the fire pit, and taking a seat and a slice of pizza. It was then that I realized that despite all of that movement, he hadn't even broken a sweat. I found a pace to sway with her at, happy when the young Stevie Nicks flashed me a smile.

"So, Levi's in pretty good shape," I scoffed while Petra wrapped her arms around my neck and stepped closer to me. I rested my hands on her waist while we danced to the slower song that I had actually listened to quite a bit growing up.

"Yeah. It's kinda scary. I've never met another person that can just toss me like I'm a ragdoll," she laughed, and I watched as the other dancers began to slow down around us. I averted my gaze as Oluo and Riko as well as several other dancers took the slow song as an opportunity to start making out, while they swayed awkwardly in a vain attempt to keep time with the beat. As I wasn't in the mood to have my tongue down anybody's throat, I simply kept pace with the rhythm, beginning to take small liberties, and switching our foot pattern as the beat shifted, now focusing on keeping time with the flute, instead of the guitar.

"There's a lady who's sure," I murmured, cracking my lips into a smile, happy that I knew the song. Petra seemed to appreciate it, too, as her face broke out into a giddy grin, her fawn brown eyes glimmering in the headlights and flickering as it reflected the bonfire. "All that glitters is gold, and she's buying a stairway, _to heaven_."

"I love this song," was her only response as we continued to dance. Petra's cheeks were glowing with an incredulous blush as I began to take more liberties, twisting her so that her back was to me, rocking with her for a moment like that and watching as her arms crossed over her chest. I spun her back out, and pulled her to me again while the melody continued to grow louder. I generally wasn't much of a dancer, but I knew my way around slow songs enough to be a little less boring than the others. "My cassanova," she said, a sardonic tone in her voice as I pulled her in close once again, doing my best to imitate the dip that Levi had done with her, but only about ten percent as quickly, grinning at my own stupid attempts to amuse her.

Despite doing it slower, time seemed to slow down even more while I lowered her to the ground. She leaned backwards, tipping her chin back as she reached behind her and waved at Levi, whose eyes were wide, and his brow furrowed while he watched us, catching his bottom lip between his teeth and watching Petra. Before I was finished, his eyes met mine as I continued to mouth the words to the song. Some people were looking at the way that Petra continued to sink, smiles on their faces at my antics. She wrapped one of her legs behind mine to hold herself in place while I suspended her just barely above the ground.

"And my spirit is crying," I murmured, holding Petra in place for a moment longer before pulling her back to her feet, "for leaving." I held his gaze until I couldn't any longer, realizing how similar 'leaving' had sounded to 'Levi' when I had heard those lyrics. Replaying the verse in my head but switching out the words, I toyed around with the idea of it while Petra pulled a cigarette from the pocket of her jacket, flicking the lighter and taking a drag while she swayed back and forth in my arms. There had been something so intimate about the lingering look I'd shared with Levi, that it was no wonder my face was enough to catch Petra's notice.

"Little hot?" Petra grinned, blowing the smoke away from my face before offering up the rolled stick of tobacco.

"A little," I sighed, taking a long, slow pull from her cigarette as she took my hand and led me off the dance floor.

"He can dance!" She squealed, wrapping her arms tightly around my waist and peeking out from underneath my arm. I patted her back while the song continued to play, drawing out the sweet tune of "Stairway to Heaven" while we approached the mostly untended fire. I passed her smoke back to her and sat down beside her around the dying flames.

"Not well," I snorted when Levi looked up at us from his seat. He narrowed his eyes at us and nodded slowly at Petra's excitement. It was then that a freshly painted black charger pulled into the lot, and all of the muscles in Petra's body collectively tensed.

"Who told him he could show up?" Levi growled abrasively, the first thing I'd heard him say with any sort of emotional charge behind it.

"Who is it?" I asked, looking between Petra, who was effectively frozen in place, and Levi whose body began to coil itself like he wanted to spring from his chair. I placed my hands on my knees in case I needed to stand up quickly.

"My ex-boyfriend," Petra sighed, putting her cigarette out beneath the heel of her boot.

"Fucking bastard," Levi muttered when the engine cut and a tall, thin blonde boy stepped out of the car. He made his way to the mostly unoccupied fire pit and marched right up to the horrified redhead.

"What do you want?" she snapped, standing up to face him, putting up an intimidating front, but I could tell she was terrified out of her mind.

"Nice party, Ral," he sneered, narrowing his eyes at her and taking a step closer to her. He absolutely dwarfed Petra, making her look like she was maybe twelve years old in comparison to him. I stood and stepped beside her, hoping to level the playing field. "Find somebody else to fuck over?" he said, his voice scalding like acid while he looked me over, the smell of alcohol strong in his breath. Although it wasn't my place, I didn't like how close he was standing to her, so I started speaking.

"Hey, nobody invited you man," I said, folding my arms at the boy that stood almost six inches over me. "Can't you find something better to do?"

"Look, I dunno who you are, but I suggest you stay out of this, squirt," the boy scoffed. "This bitch is the biggest whore in the school. Left me to go find other conquests. Isn't that right, Petra?"

"Listen, Zeke," she sighed, running her fingers through her hair and trying her hardest to maintain a nonchalance about her, but her facade was crumbling, and I could see her shoulders shaking. Any fool would know that she was terrified of him, but trying to remain civil. I wondered what he could possibly have done to her to elicit such strong responses from both her and Levi. "You're obviously drunk. Go home before you get yourself hurt."

"Was that a threat, bitch?" he asked, but as she began to voice her reply, he lifted a hand to her, and swung back to slap her. The sound of the strike resonated through the lookout spot, and at that point, I completely lost all semblance of composure, grabbing the boy by the shirt and backing him away from the fire pit, and though he tried to fight my grip on him, I took a breath and threw a punch, hitting him nowhere damaging, but certainly hard enough to stun him. I heard Levi saying something to Petra, but everything sounded like it was underwater.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" he shouted at me, still recoiling from the body shot I'd thrown. He was quick to the rebound as he lifted his arm to swing, and I took a punch to my cheekbone. My eyes stung as they began to well with salty tears, but I held my ground and threw another punch as I heard footsteps approach to my right.

"You get the hell out of here," Levi muttered, immediately slamming a fist into Zeke's diaphragm and pushing him backwards as he curled forward, doubling over as he lost his breath. The force behind Levi's hands had been enough to knock him backwards and onto his bottom on the gravel. "I don't want you talking to her, I don't want you looking at her. If I even see you within _ten feet of her_ ever again, I swear on everything that is holy you will regret the day you were ever fucking born." There was a cold glow in his lifeless eyes that reminded me that he had killed people, and his voice sent shivers down my spine as he spoke to the boy, whose eyes were now impossibly wide as he scooted backwards and away from us, though it seemed that Levi was much more terrifying than I was being. "You wanna try anything else? Huh?"

Zeke stood and squared his shoulders, dropping into a boxing stance, perhaps to protect his honor, though facing somebody like an angry Levi would have made me high tail out of there. "You thought I was done?"

"You're not?" Levi scoffed as Zeke threw a sucker punch in my direction, nailing me right in the jaw. I staggered backwards, but Levi's hand shot out and caught my arm while he swung at Zeke again. I barreled towards the boy and knocked him over with my shoulder, falling on top of him, despite his attempts to keep me beneath him.

Despite his squirming, I was able to swipe the side of his cheekbone while he turned his head, my fist falling into the gravel, though I felt no pain register yet. Levi dropped to his knees at Zeke's head and wrapped his hand around his throat, slowly tightening his fingers around the boy's neck and blocking his airways.

"You done now? Look. Lemme spell it out for you, in case I wasn't being clear enough before. In a fair fight, I would have a hard time getting any hits in where they count, but this isn't a fair fight. I will beat you to fucking death," he said, his voice a terrifying calm while he slammed his knuckles directly into the center of Zeke's face.

Zeke let out a strangled cry of pure agony as I realized that Levi had broken his nose. Blood sprayed me while I held him down and I could hear people beginning to crowd around the commotion. "If I ever see you near Petra again, I won't be so kind," he spat, pushing Zeke's head into the gravel a final time before he stood, reaching down to help me up. "Get lost," he muttered, before raising his voice. "Nobody help him up," he called to the crowd, who froze in their efforts to assist the boy on the ground and followed us back to the fire pit, murmuring questions amongst themselves while Petra stood, her wide eyes locking onto me.

I could tell that Zeke was not the only person that was bleeding as blood began to drip from my lips. I hadn't lost a tooth, I realized with a sigh of relief, but my teeth had sliced the inside of my cheek when Zeke had punched me. I looked down and noticed that my knuckles were also scraped pretty badly, little bits of gravel lodged into the gashes.

"Ooh, he got you," Petra gasped, rushing over to me and taking my face in her soft ivory hands. I grinned and Petra nearly passed out as blood dripped from between my teeth. "Oh my God, I am so sorry. I-"

"Hey. You have nothing to apologize for," I laughed, starting to feel the pain in the cuts on my knuckles and in my mouth, coupled by the dull ache of a growing black eye. I noticed that the handprint on her cheek nearly glowed in the firelight. "I'm fine. Levi got him pretty good for ya."

"Hey, I mean I wouldn't have been able to reach unless you'd been holding him down," Levi scoffed, folding his arms at me while Petra's cool hands mulled me over. "Where'd you learn how to do that?"

"Do what? Get beat up?" I laughed, focusing on my swollen knuckles and picking the pieces of gravel that had torn them up out of the broken skin.

"No. The shoulder-check thing. That was good. 'Specially considering he'd just clocked ya," Levi said, his voice slowly decreasing in intensity as he calmed down, back to his normal blase tone of speaking. "I'm impressed," he said with a frown curling the corners of his lips down.

"Oh, I dunno. Where'd you learn how to break people's noses?" I laughed, wincing when Petra retrieved a small flask from Levi's jacket and poured the whiskey into my cuts watching the stream of amber trickle between my fingertips and mix with the blood as it dripped onto the ground.

"Touche," he muttered, fixing his eyes on my knuckles when Oluo and Riko found us to ask what was going on.

"Jesus Christ," Riko muttered, taking off her flannel and using it to blot my bleeding knuckles. "I can't believe he'd just show up here."

"Oh wow," Oluo said, stumbling backwards as he stared at the deep cuts on my hand.

"It's not that deep," I assured the group. "It just looks really gnarly cuz it's gravel."

"Gnarly?" Oluo questioned, and I realized that that was not slang from this era. In an attempt to backpedal, I spoke again.

"Like, gross," I muttered, hoping to cover up my slip a little. Levi continued to stand solidly beside me, totally steadfast in his stance, and I wondered if he would stay that way the whole night. I looked over my shoulder and Zeke was finally beginning to stir, slowly climbing to his feet and staggering towards the driver's seat of his car.

"You're insane!" he shouted at Levi, flipping him off while he climbed into his car and sped off, his headlights disappearing around the bend as he drove back towards town.

"Maybe so," Levi said in the same cold, deadly tone he'd used earlier. As the adrenaline began to wear off, both of us were trembling. Oluo's skin had assumed a green tinge to it while Riko continued to blot my cuts.

"Right," Oluo nodded, gagging when I flexed and curled my fingers to test my mobility, his eyes fixed on the way that my muscles warped and pushed more blood from my hand. "Oh my God. I can't-" he gagged again, stumbling away from us while he tried to hold back his dinner.

"Ollie!" Riko called after him. "Seems like you have it pretty handled over here, guys. Mind if I go chase my idiot down?"

"No. Go right ahead," Petra nodded, looking up to me for approval. I nodded as well and Riko passed her flannel to Petra before turning on her heel, chasing after her squeamish boyfriend. "Seriously, Eren. Like, are you okay?"

"Yeah," I nodded, sucking in a sharp breath as her fingertips began to touch where he'd nailed me in the cheek.

"He's fine. He just needs to walk it off," Levi answered before I had a chance to speak again. "Walk with me, Eren. You okay, Petra."

Petra nodded at him, sitting down in one of the cloth camping chairs again. My stomach dropped as I realized that he wanted to take a walk with me, completely alone, but I swallowed any fear I'd been harboring, as we'd been batting for the same team that night, and felt like I was safe for the time being. In my safety, I was happy to see that I had earned the respect that glimmered in his eyes. "Sure," I replied, still fairly dazed from being hit in the face twice as I followed him out into the inky blackness of the night.


	7. Chapter 5

As I followed Levi down the road that led away from where the party was, the music began to quiet, and the lights began to dim, just a faint glow around the bend by the time we'd made it a little ways out. I knew I should have felt afraid of him, but there was a part of me that was telling me I shouldn't be afraid of him at the moment. I had no reason to fear him that night. He had helped me, and I felt much more gratitude than fear as we walked further from the gathering. I wasn't sure who would speak first, so I decided to wait it out, focusing on the sound of the loose asphalt crunching beneath our feet as we continued to descend the bluff.

"Thank you," Levi muttered after another minute or two of silence.

"For what?" I replied, certain he was just thanking me to be polite. I had not been much help in that fight, although I was sure that Zeke looked much worse than I did.

"Gettin' right in there. I know it means a lot to Petra. It's nice when people look out for you," Levi said, the moonlight lighting up his alabaster complexion so that his skin shone a brilliant shade of blue.

"I just did what anyone would do," I shrugged, feeling my shoulders ache when I moved them, from what I assumed was likely the reward I got for taking the slimy bastard down with my shoulder.

"Not anyone. Lotta people would have just watched and let it happen," Levi said, exhaling a short sigh before turning off of the road into the woods. I felt the fear gnawing my stomach when he motioned for me to follow him.

"Where are you going?" I called after him, staying where I was. I was not about to be killed in my first week of real work. "There's no trail off that way!"

"See if I give a shit. You coming, or not?" Levi snorted, continuing to walk into the woods, regardless of whether I did or not.

"Where are you going?" I asked again, walking to the edge of the tree line, looking in at the scraggly junipers and pinyon pines, stunted by a lack of water, but they had grown up enough to partially obscure my view of him as he made his way further into the woods.

"There's a little cliff ledge that's really quiet, and just about five hundred feet this way," he said, and I couldn't tell if he was luring me to my death, or just genuinely wanted to sit with me for a while.

"You're not gonna push me off, are you?" I asked, hoping that my joking tone was coming across strong enough.

"Why would I do that?" he asked flatly without turning back to look at me as he completely disappeared between the short, stubby trees. I let out a long sigh, and quickly composed myself before chasing him into the forest. I wasn't sure that he wasn't going to kill me, but was willing to take my chances. He snorted when I caught up with him. "Yeah, thought so," he scoffed at me when I began to walk in time with him, our bodies less than a foot apart as he led me further into the woods.

Finally after far too long of walking silently through the forest, the trees began to clear and, just like Levi had said, there was a cliff with several boulders and disruptions in the rock, more than enough to find somewhere to sit. I could see the valley that we were in, several little towns glittering in the distance, but there wasn't anything even close to comparable to the billions of glittering stars overhead. I had lived in cities and suburbs my whole life, and had yet to see a sky like the one that I was currently witnessing.

"This was longer than five hundred feet," I panted, tired from all the effort I had expended that night, with the fight and the deceiving hike.

"Eh," he shrugged. "I was guessing."

I took a seat on a rock and crossed my legs while Levi found his own boulder to perch on. "This is really cool, Levi," I said reverently, still staring at the sky with my mouth agape.

"And you thought I was gonna push you off," he scoffed, folding his arms and leaning back against the ancient rock. He sat silently for a moment before opening his mouth to speak again. "I could get used to this. If I could pull off the grizzled mountain-man speel, I'd wanna live right here."

"Yeah," I nodded, wondering why Levi had even brought me out here, but not willing to question it. "This is-"

"Shhh," he snapped, effectively shutting me up. "Just listen," he whispered, settling again into his contented silence. I tuned my ears to try and focus on whatever it was that Levi was so intent on hearing, but only heard the silent night, and the breeze between the branches of the old trees. Everything about that spot felt ancient, like I had traveled even further back in time than I had initially intended to.

"I don't hear anything," I whispered in response after a moment longer of straining my ears to hear whatever he was listening to. I couldn't even hear the party anymore.

"Exactly. That's the point, brat," he exhaled, closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the rock he rested on. I wasn't sure if I could trust him enough that I felt comfortable closing my eyes while I sat on the cliffside with him, so I continued to look at the sky.

We sat in silence for what felt like hours before Levi began to hum a quiet tune to himself that I couldn't quite place. "What song is that?" I asked him, and watched as his eyelids fluttered open again, like he was awakened from a long slumber.

"You don't know it?" he asked, and I could feel the judgement in his words while he flicked an eyebrow up at me.

I shook my head and he let out a snort at my apparent ignorance. "I guess I'm not much of a hummer, so that must not be a huge help. It's just a song that my mom likes," he said quietly, and I couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for him. I hadn't considered the fact that he would even give her a second thought after she'd kicked him out.

"What's it called?" I asked, hoping that the more pointed question would get an answer from him.

"C'mon you really don't know it?" he asked, but sighed when I shook my head at him. "Peter, Paul and Mary? "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" You seriously don't know it?"

"Nope," I said quietly, returning my gaze to the stars while Levi settled back into the silence. "But it's nice. You can keep humming."

"Nah, it's okay. The song was over," he said, the quiet inflections of his voice seeming about as close to relaxed as he ever was, still maintaining his solid stoicism after the fight. "Thanks again for the help back there."

I could tell he was uncomfortable speaking out of turn, especially about something so unnecessary as thanking me. "No problem," I nodded, trying my hardest to commit the scene before me to memory. It was too pretty to ever want to forget. "Honestly."

"Zeke's a stupid bastard," he replied quietly, exhaling through his nose and shaking his head.

"Seems like it," I said, tracing the uneven surface of the rock I was on, feeling the cracks and bumps move beneath my fingertips. "I get why Petra wants nothing to do with him."

"It's not really anybody's business, but yeah, that's the skinny of it," Levi said. I hummed a quiet affirmation and tore my eyes away from the sky to scan Levi's expression, only to see that he'd been looking at me. He quickly looked away, fixing his gaze on his feet while I awkwardly moved my glance to my own feet. "But we should probably get back. Check on Petra."

"Yeah," I said in agreement, feeling a little awkward after catching him staring.

"Wanna smoke before we cut out?" He asked, lifting a joint and a lighter from the pocket of his jacket.

"How is it that you always have a joint on you when I see you?" I laughed while he climbed to the spot next to me.

"Because I always have a joint on me," he scoffed, taking a seat beside me before flicking his lighter and lighting the joint. "You've got nothin' to do with it."

"Fair enough," I nodded, forgetting for a moment that we were so far apart in age while he lit the spliff and took a hit. I reached for the rolled marijuana, but he slapped my hand. "No way," he snapped at me wiping his hand on his pants. "I'm gonna do it for you, because I don't need your bloody hand juices getting all over my nice dope. It's bad enough I already got Zeke's viscera on it from when I clocked him."

"Oh, okay," I nodded while he held the joint to my lips, his fingers just barely skimming them while I puffed on the obsessively neat little thing. I felt my throat tense up from the smoke of the marijuana, stinging the cut in my mouth, and I choked on it while Levi pulled the joint from my mouth, patting my back while I coughed.

"You good?" he asked, patting until I stopped coughing, but I could feel his hand hovering over my spine in case I started coughing again.

"I'm fine," I smiled while he continued to suck the smoke into his lungs. "Just the cut in my mouth freaked me out."

"I can dig that," he replied apathetically. "Wanna try again?"

"Sure," I snorted while he put the joint to my mouth again, resting his hand on my back in case I started coughing again. I took a smaller hit of it and he took it back, returning it to his mouth as he held it between his fingers. "You're a good dancer, ya know. Where'd you learn to do that?"

"I dunno," he shrugged, effectively ending that segment of discussion. "Where'd you learn how to stare somebody down like that?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, not quite sure what he was referring to.

"You know what I mean," Levi murmured, the breeze muffling the sound of his voice beneath it as it whipped faster through the trees. The fact of the matter was that I didn't know what he was talking about, but wasn't willing to push it any further.

"I dunno," I smirked, mimicking his voice in reference to his previous words. I watched him as he flicked the dead spliff off the cliff and into the valley below. It was then that I became acutely aware of the fact that his hand still rested on my back, like he'd forgotten to remove it after I'd finished smoking. He slouched forward, and finally removed his hand from my back, resting both hands on his knees instead. "You ready?" I asked, not wanting to be away for too long, as I thought about Petra worrying about our absence.

"Yeah, let's split," Levi agreed, turning from the cliff and climbing to his feet while I did the same. He led me back out of the woods and onto the main road, and we walked in total silence back towards the party. "How'd you find that place?" I asked.

"This isn't the first party we've had up here, ya know. Not the first party I've walked away from, either," he replied quietly as we made our way back into the gravel parking lot, squeezing past crowds of drunk teenagers in search of our group. We quickly found Petra sitting with Riko in the back of Ollie's truck. Levi hopped the tail gate while I rested my chin on the side of the rust-covered bed.

"How ya doin'?" Petra asked, taking a hold of my hair to hold me still while she gave me a quick appraisal.

"I'm good," I grinned, feeling the full effect of the joint by the time we had made it back to the lookout together.

"Ya look pretty jelled out," Riko smiled, wrapping her arms around Petra's body from behind, putting her chin on the ginger's shoulder and grinning lazily at me from the bed of the truck.

"That might be the case," I laughed while Petra continued to examine every inch of my face to search for any developments on my injuries.

"Well, you've got a shiner, dude," Petra sighed, releasing her grip on my hair and motioning for me to join them in the back of the truck. I climbed in and took a seat beside Petra. "I dunno what to tell you. I'm sorry."

"No worries, man. It's okay. I'll heal up okay," I nodded at her, hoping to comfort her a little bit. "Wasn't your fault."

"Yeah but-" Petra started to say, but Levi cut her off.

"But nothing, Ral. I don't wanna hear you say that. If he's saying it wasn't your fault, and I'm saying it wasn't your fault, which is what I'm saying, then it wasn't your fault," Levi snapped, reaching into the cooler for another beer.

"Jeez, okay," Petra muttered, scooting closer to me while Levi took a long drink from the glass bottle he'd retrieved. "Are you okay, though?"

"He's fine, Petra," Levi sighed, exasperated and tired of trying to explain to her that it was not, in fact, her fault that I had a black eye. "He said he was fine." In processing his words, I realized that that was very typical behavior in cases of Antisocial Personality Disorder. He couldn't grasp why she still felt bad after I had told her that I was fine, and her persistence frustrated him.

"It's okay, Levi," I replied gently, trying to redirect his train of thought to something of compassion. "I'll tell her as many times as she needs me to." Petra's expression softened at my words and she smiled when she turned to me.

Levi let out a quiet grunt to confirm that he'd heard me. "Where's Oluo?"

"Right here," Oluo grinned, slapping his hands on the back of Levi's shoulders as he approached the truck, climbing in after he had startled his friend.

"Right, but where _were_ you?" Levi asked, taking another drink of his beer.

"Takin' a piss," Ollie scoffed while Levi's eyes widened.

"Oh my God, your _dick_ touched those hands, Ollie!" He exclaimed, reaching back and wiping off the back of his jacket. "You're disgusting."

"Yeah, yeah," Ollie laughed. "You'll get over it."

"Shut up," Levi snapped while Ollie wrapped an arm around Riko, who leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek before her head drooped to his shoulder.

"So where'd you and Eren go off to?" Riko asked lazily, wriggling her way inside of her boyfriend's jacket.

"Mind your potatoes, Riko," Levi snapped. "We went for a walk and smoked a spliff. End of story."

"Fine then, I'll ask Eren," Riko pouted, turning to me while she questioned our whereabouts.

"I dunno. We just walked around, I guess," I shrugged, not wanting to piss Levi off by being any more specific.

"See? Both of our lips are zipped. He's not narcin'," Levi snorted, finishing off his beer and rolling the bottle away from him with the side of his boot.

"Aw come on," she begged, batting her long eyelashes at us while we collectively shrugged. "You guys were gone for almost an hour. Tell me."

"We seriously just took a walk. We didn't go anywhere in particular," I said, not sure what else to say, and feeling a little shock at the realization that we'd been gone far longer than I had assumed.

"We were gone for an hour?" Levi asked, lifting an eyebrow at Riko while he questioned her.

"Yeah, I mean almost," Riko said, tossing her hair behind her shoulders. "You guys booked it at, like eight-thirty, and now it's almost ten."

"Oh," Levi murmured, not bothering to speak any more.

"Look, so Petra is gettin' ready to go home," Riko began, "and so we're gonna clean up after everybody else starts to leave, if you two wanted to go with her. Ollie said he'd feel better if you two left with her. Just to make sure she gets home okay."

I looked to Petra for confirmation, and she nodded slowly as she processed Riko's words. "Yeah, I'm kinda done for the night. And you two must be tired."

"I'm alright, but Oluo's right," Levi replied quietly, shifting his gaze from Riko to Petra when she started speaking. "I wouldn't feel good about having you go home by yourself."

"Yeah, totally. Not with lunatics like Zeke out on the road," I nodded. "I'm ready whenever you are."

"Okay, then I'm ready," Petra smiled, tugging on the sleeves of her jacket and reaching towards Riko to give her a quick hug before wishing them a good night. I hopped from the truck and turned around to help Petra down, catching her by the waist and guiding her to the ground, ignoring the painful tugging on the cuts on my hand while I watched Levi drop lithely from the truck, jogging around the back of it to catch up with us as Petra unlocked her car. I pushed the seat forward and was about to climb into the back seat when a hand caught my shoulder.

"What do you think you're doing?" Levi asked, his cold monotony ever present. "You get shotgun."

"I was just thinking that I got it on the way there, so I figured you'd want it on the way back," I said, raising my hands and trying to justify myself.

"Not after that slug you took from Zeke. I can handle the back seat for a while. Besides, you have longer legs," Levi said, pushing past me and climbing into the back seat.

"I- okay," I nodded while Levi closed himself in the back row, taking the choice from me as I strapped myself into the front seat of the sportscar. Petra revved the engine to get the crowds of students out of her way while she backed out of the parking lot and started back down the road again.

"So, Eren, how was your first party of the school year? You have total permission to tell me it sucked and you never wanna do it again," Petra laughed grimly while she continued down the switchbacks and to the foot of the bluffs.

"It wasn't actually that bad. Certainly not the worst party I've been to," I snorted, trying to lighten the mood a little, and keep Petra from feeling bad about what had happened.

"Liar," she giggled, "but I appreciate you sparing my feelings."

"You don't know the parties I've been to. At least the cops didn't show up," I said, striking her down with a toothy grin. My mouth still tasted like copper, but I had since stopped caring.

"I hate the fuzz," Petra groaned, before continuing, "But tell us about yourself."

I raised an eyebrow at the girl as she drove the black, deserted highway back towards any signs of life. "Well, what do you wanna know?"

"Well, like, I dunno, what kinda stuff do you do? For fun, ya know?" Petra asked, slowing the car down to let a jackrabbit bound across the dark, lonely road, the rabbit only a shadow in the sliver of her bright headlights.

"I don't really have a lot of hobbies," I shrugged and Levi let out a scoff from the back seat. "What'd I say?" I asked him, turning around to see his piercing silver eyes immediately lock onto mine, forcing me to melt into my boots.

"Well, obviously, you enjoy something that's put you into pretty good shape," Levi muttered. "You shoulda seen yourself in that fight, man."

"I probably looked like a spaz," I snorted.

"Well, not exactly a champion boxer, or anything, but I'm willing to bet that you did some wrestling at some point," Levi observed. I had done some wrestling in middle school, but it was nothing really to speak of.

"Eh, I guess," I shrugged. "I was never really good at it. I played basketball for a while, but I'm not exactly the tallest player on the team. Especially at my old school. One guy was six-six."

"Aw, don't be so hard on yourself, dude," Petra tried to console me. "Do you like swimming? There's a cute little swimming hole about an hour away. I'm sure I could arrange a smaller get-together and we could all head out tomorrow or the next day before school starts up again on Monday."

"Sure, while the weather's still nice, that could be really cool," I nodded.

"You coming, Levi?" Petra asked, raising an eyebrow at her friend through the rear-view mirror.

"If you're gonna have me stay at your place tonight, do I really have a choice?" Levi asked, and I wondered if maybe Petra and Levi had something going on with one another. It hadn't been in my notes on him, that he'd had any serious relationships in high school, but I figured that it wouldn't be on my notes if they'd only been fooling around.

"Fair enough," Petra snorted. "So, Eren."

"Yeah?" I asked, looking at her, taking in her fragile, angular profile in the starlight. She had high cheekbones and slim facial structure, making her appear even more gaunt and bony than she already was.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" she probed. I didn't have one before I went back, and figured that being honest would get me more points than telling a petty lie, so I channeled honesty in my next words.

"Nah. I haven't really dated anybody in a while," I said quietly.

"What are you, gay, or something?" Petra laughed.

I was a little thrown off by the question, but shook my head in denial. "No?" I shrugged, not sure what else to say.

"Well, are you a virgin?" she asked, and I wondered what she must have smoked before getting in the car to come up with that kind of question. I couldn't help the single, sharp laugh that escaped my lips at her probing. "I'll take that as a no?"

"Are _you_ a virgin?" I asked, spinning the question back onto her.

"Yeah," she nodded, and that startled me. She didn't seem like the type to wait for something like that.

"Really?" I asked, and then it was Levi and Petra's turn to laugh, and I could hear the dark cynicism in Levi's quiet chuckle, a sound that sent a chill down my spine.

"No," they both snorted, looking at one another through the rear view mirror, and my sixth sense seemed to prove accurate. It certainly seemed like Petra and Levi were hooking up.

"But you never answered my question, Eren," Petra asked. "Are you a virgin?"

"No," I said, shaking my head. I was being honest. I was practically the town bicycle, and had been since high school. The fact of the matter was that I never actually ended up enjoying it, but my idea was that eventually, I'd come across a girl that satisfied me, and so tried every one out just to see if she would be the one, but nobody ever had been yet.

"Right," Levi muttered, folding his arms and nodding. "Likely story."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Petra snapped at Levi's response. "Are you saying he's unfuckable?"

"I didn't say that, I just-" Levi started to say, but Petra's warning glare was enough to shut him up.

"You're getting on my nerves, dweeb. I'll make you walk."

"Oh no, whatever shall I do?" Levi said, casting a sarcastic expression over his face while he looked at his friend.

"So you two," I began, pausing while I thought of the most delicate way to word it, "are a thing?" I asked, looking first at Petra, and then at Levi, watching their faces twitching with amusement from an unspoken joke.

" _No_ ," they both said at once, before Petra continued. "We got down once, but Levi's like my brother now."

"Yeah, and Petra's just," he paused, considering his words for a moment.

"Choose wisely, Levi, you have two strikes left and you're hitchhiking back to town," Petra snapped, still wearing a smirk as she addressed the boy in the backseat.

"Petra's the foxiest, bombest chick I know. How was that?" he snorted, smiling humorlessly. His face seemed amused, but his eyes remained empty, totally stagnant.

"Good enough," Petra grinned, turning on the radio in her car once more, as she'd shut it off when we had first piled in. "But, seriously, Levi, would you mind sleeping over? I'm still- it-" she stuttered, but Levi spoke over her.

"Yeah, I'll stay over. Still got that beanbag chair in your room?" Levi asked.

"Mhm," she nodded. "Thank you."

"I get it," he murmured while we drove back into town, listening to the music that played on the radio, but none of us speaking another word until Petra pulled into my driveway.

"This is your stop," Petra smiled, patting my knee before speaking again. "Thank you," she said softly, pressing a kiss to my cheek as she parked the car. Levi cleared his throat as Petra pulled away, eliciting a soft giggle from her lips as she looked back at the boy in the back seat. I felt a flush creeping up my cheeks, a little shaken that she'd done that right in front of Levi, or at all.

"Uh, sure. No problem," I nodded. "I just did what anybody would have done. Hitting girls is off limits, man."

"Well, I'm glad you think so," she smiled, tossing a wink in my direction that I wasn't sure if I had imagined or not.

"Good night, guys. See ya later?" I asked.

"We'll likely be by around noon tomorrow if you're still down. Here, gimme your number, and I'll give you a call tomorrow," she instructed, holding up a receipt and a pencil for me to write my number on. I jotted down the ten digits of our landline and passed it to her.

"Alrighty, I'm gonna bounce," I nodded, pushing the door open and pulling the seat forward so that Levi could climb out and take shotgun from me.

"Keep on truckin', man," Petra smiled, lifting her hand from the steering wheel to wave at me.

"G'night, John-boy," Levi said coldly, saluting me as they peeled out of the driveway while I started for my front door. Unlocking it and pulling it open, I stepped into the front room and found Isabel in the kitchen, sitting on the counter while she talked to Farlan in hushed tones. Her eyes moved from him to me and she let out a shriek as she jumped from the counter and sprinted to my side.

"Oh my God!" She gasped, her pinned red hair bobbing as she made her way to me. "What happened? Do we need to take you to a hospital?"

"Did Levi do that to you?" Farlan asked, narrowing his eyes at me while he stood beside Isabel, crossing his arms and assuming a sort of defensive stance.

"No. I'm fine, I don't need a hospital. It wasn't Levi," I said quickly, answering several questions at once so that their concern would dial back a little bit. "Levi actually jumped in and helped me."

"What happened?" Isabel asked again, moving to the freezer and pulling out a frozen bag of peas and pressing it to my swollen cheekbone. "Aw, Sweetie, come sit down." I nodded when she passed the pack to my hand, leading me into the living room and sitting on the couch beside me.

"Well, one of the girls, Petra, has this ex-boyfriend named Zeke, and he hit her, so I hit him," I said quietly. "All the blood is from when I cut my cheek and when I accidentally punched the ground instead of Zeke.

"You're sure you don't need to see a doctor?" Farlan asked, and I could almost see the change in his attitude, from something of worry, to something of calculated information gain.

"I'm sure," I nodded, holding up my hands and wiggling my fingers, wincing at the feeling of the broken skin tugging on itself, but feeling my joints still properly functioning. "Nothing's broken."

"So how did Levi help you, then? It seems like you've probably taken the brunt of whatever that was," Farlan questioned, and Isabel pulled a notepad from the coffee table and began to take notes while I spoke.

"I dunno, I got the guy on the ground, and Levi slugged him right in the nose. It didn't look right after that. I'm pretty sure he broke it," I replied while Isabel transcribed my words onto the page.

"Okay, now, did Levi seem angry with either one of you?" Isabel asked, looking up from her notepad and tucking the greying wisps of hair that hung around her face back behind her ears.

"He seemed really pissed that Zeke had even showed up, but he wasn't mad at me, I don't think. I think that I may have actually gained some respect from him by doing that," I answered with a shrug. "He took me for a walk to cool down, and we actually had a conversation. Well, as much as Levi's willing to facilitate a conversation."

"And what did you talk about?" Isabel asked. "Anything noteworthy?" It felt wrong to analyze Levi like that, but we were saving lives, so any guilt was overridden by the sense of security that I got from explaining to Isabel and Farlan that I had not gotten any red flags from Levi yet, apart from the bit about beating Zeke to death, but I was willing to let that one slip as a heat of the moment thing.

"I dunno. We just kinda talked about nothing in particular," I replied with a shrug. "He seems to still hold a form of compassion for his mother. He was humming a song, and when I asked him what it was, he said his mother had liked it."

"Interesting," Farlan muttered, scratching his chin. "Well, Eren, I'm sure you would love to take a shower right about now, so Isabel and I'll let you go for now, but we may call you back downstairs afterwards if we can think of anything else to ask you."

"Right," I nodded. "Okay. Goodnight, guys."

"Goodnight Eren," Isabel said, a worried pallor sinking into her face as the blood drained from it while I walked upstairs, happy to peel off my clothing, which was stiff from the dried blood, and turn on the hot water of the shower. The spray of blood from Zeke's nose had made things look much worse than they were, I realized when I finally looked in the mirror. While I waited for the water to heat up, I began to wonder why Isabel looked so concerned after I had just explained that Levi seemed to still be clinging to his humanity. He had helped me in a fight, battling his friend's abuser with me, and had spoken relatively fondly of his mother. I didn't see what they saw, or perhaps there was something they weren't telling me, which concerned me even more as I stepped into the now warm water of the shower, scrubbing the night off of me with a fresh bar of soap.

I was sure that if it became a concern, that they would address whatever it was with me, but for that night, at least, I was proud to have noticed Levi's humanity.


	8. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Half naked boys are in your immediate future. How exciting! Enjoy the fucking chapter, sluts.

I woke up the next morning as I heard the house phone ringing downstairs, reminding me that Petra had said she would call. Hardly giving myself time to completely wake up, I sprang from between my sheets and burst from my wooden bedroom door, hurrying to pick it up before Farlan or Isabel. Upon waking, I could feel each individual injury with an aching depth that only seemed to grow the longer I was focused on it. My knuckles were swollen and covered in scabs, and I was a little afraid to look in the mirror again, for fear of the temporarily disfiguring black eye that I knew awaited me.

"I'll get it!" I yelled to the rest of the house, as I moved swiftly into the kitchen to take the phonecall. Lifting the phone from the rocker with a gentle click of the receiver, I spoke into the microphone. "Hello?" I asked, not immediately addressing Petra in case it hadn't been her calling.

"Eren?" Petra's voice asked, her voice muffled by the transmission through the wires and cords of the telephone.

"Yeah?" I replied quietly, waiting for her to start talking. "That's me."

"Okay, good," she said, letting out a short sigh before speaking again. "I asked Riko and Oluo if they wanted to come with us, but both of them are hungover out of their minds, and don't feel like doing much of anything. So this leaves us with two options. Option one, we forget about them, and have a bomb-ass time on our own. Personally a fan of option one. Or option two, is we wait for them to feel better, and just go tomorrow." She paused for a moment, and I could hear what sounded like a television running in the background of her phone call. "Choice is yours. Levi and I are gonna chill either way, but if you're still down, we can come and get you."

"I'll still come, if you guys still want me to," I said, shrugging despite myself, standing alone in that kitchen on the warm Saturday morning. It was then that I noticed a piece of notebook paper stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. Walking across the kitchen and stretching out the long telephone cord in the process, I plucked the note from the fridge and read the sloppy cursive that inscribed the letter:

_Eren. Farlan and I have both got to work today, but we thought better than to wake you. The car will not be available until later this evening, around four-thirty at the earliest. Have a lovely day, and ICE YOUR EYE._

_Isabel._

_P.S. If you need either of us, the numbers to our offices are right here._

I read the two numbers listed, as well as Isabel's brief side note, scrawled into the margins, explaining that it would likely be easier to reach Isabel if there happened to be an emergency. I returned the note to the refrigerator as Petra began to speak again.

"Of course!" she exclaimed, pausing for a moment. "I mean, yeah, of course," she said, using a much calmer tone of voice as she spoke. "Yeah. We have to get in our suits, but we'll be by in," she paused, trying to give me an estimate, before deciding to get a second opinion. "Levi?"

"Yes?" I heard his voice say on the other end of the line. There was a certain edge to the sound of his raspy voice that hadn't been there the night prior, though I couldn't say for sure what that meant.

"How long do you think? I'm trying to tell Eren when we'll be by to pick him up," Petra said quietly, as she was no longer talking to me.

"Hell if I know," he muttered, and I could almost hear the eye-roll in his voice. "Give it, like thirty minutes. Hear that, Eren? Thirty minutes. Bye," I heard him say before he hung up the phone rather abruptly, leaving me to search for a swimsuit to wear, and reminding me that I still had to look at myself in the mirror at some point, which I was growing less excited to do with every passing second. I found a pair of navy blue swim trunks with a horizontal band of white encompassing the center of the suit. I tugged off my flannel pyjama bottoms and stepped into the new pair of swim trunks. I pulled a loose white tee shirt over my head, and decided it was time that I forced myself to look in the mirror. Shuffling unenthusiastically to the bathroom, I finally looked into the eyes of my reflection.

It wasn't nearly as horrible as I'd been expecting, not having swollen much more than it had the night prior, but was certainly more discolored, my cheek and eye socket both a lovely shade of purple. "Great," I muttered to myself, dragging my fingers through my hair and trying to pull it forward in an attempt to at least partially obscure the heavy bruising. "Just great," I sighed again, realizing that my attempts were all in vain.

I wasn't sure why I cared so much about what I looked like, but the bruising seemed to gnaw on my patience that morning, more than it would on a regular day. I made my way downstairs to the living room and slumped into the brown plaid couch, waiting for Petra and Levi to arrive.

Before very much longer, I heard a knock at my door, and so stood to answer it. Upon pulling the front door open, I saw Levi, standing on my front step with his arms crossed, a sour expression plaguing his features. "We honked," was all he said before spinning on his heel and leading the way back to Petra's car. I ran back inside to gather my things, rolling my keys and a pair of sunglasses into my beach towel before I reemerged and climbed into shotgun, which had been left vacant for me by Levi.

"What's crackin'?" Petra asked me as she pulled back out of the driveway. "We need to stop for gas real fast before we go out, because it's a little bit of a drive."

"No problem," I nodded, smiling at my new friend while I looked out into the clear, sunny morning as it began to bleed into early afternoon. "How was your night?"

"It was pretty uneventful, other than having to sneak Levi in through my window because my mother was still awake when we got to my house. He talks in his sleep, which is always entertaining," she laughed, shooting a playful glance at Levi, who didn't bother looking back at her, his eyes fixed on an unknown point out the window.

"I don't talk in my sleep," he said dryly before returning to his rigid silence. Something about him felt off that day, and I knew that it was my job to figure out what.

"You totally do," Petra pushed him. "It's mostly unintelligible, but that doesn't mean you don't talk."

"Petra, why don't you please _stop_ talking," Levi finally sighed, his eyes still unwaveringly fixed on the outside of the car. I was quick to assume that he was uncomfortable having Petra flay him out like that, but was not ready to say that that was conclusively the correct answer.

"Fine, jeez," she muttered, trying to think of something else to talk about. "So, Eren, those shorts are cool-city, where'd you get 'em?" Petra asked, turning to me and attempting to start a conversation while Levi clicked his tongue and continued staring out the window, not bothering to try to shut her up again.

"I don't know, actually, Isab-" I started to say, but quickly corrected myself before continuing my response. "My aunt went and bought them for me about two weeks ago, but I don't know where she got them," I replied, wondering why Levi was acting more strange than usual, but realized that as I didn't really know him yet, I didn't have an accurate gauge as to what his usual even was. I was sure I could lighten his mood at the very least, but had yet to come up with a viable solution to his problem. Petra pulled into a small Conoco gas station at the south side of town, sending Levi and me inside to pay for the gas and snacks while she filled up the tank.

We entered the small store and I pulled my wallet from my pocket at the same time that Levi retrieved his. We froze for a moment, both of us silently willing the other to put his wallet away. Neither one of us moved for a solid fifteen seconds before Levi finally spoke.

  
"I've got it," he muttered, pulling out a twenty dollar bill from the cash pocket, but I held my ground. As much as I wanted to save my money, I had no idea what Levi's income was like, or when he'd have twenty bucks to spare again.

"No, it's okay," I said, pulling an identical twenty from my wallet. "Don't worry about it."

"No it's not. I'm paying," Levi said, matter of factly, pushing my wallet towards my chest, and when his fingers touched mine, I became acutely aware of how cold his hands were, despite the heat wave the late summer was giving us. "I'm not letting you pay, Eren, so put that shit away and let's go grab some sodas."

I realized that I didn't have much choice in the matter, and put my wallet away with a sigh. I didn't want to further frustrate Levi, and so let him pay. We walked to the refrigerated aisle of the small convenience store and pulled out three bottles of Coca-Cola, which Levi passed to me while he grabbed a bag of chips from the shelf. He escorted me to the front of the store, watching me closely in case I reached for my wallet again.

He paid for seven dollars of gas, which amazed me. I had forgotten how cheap gas was back then, and the entirety of the purchases cost him only ten dollars. I couldn't believe that an entire bottle of Coca-Cola was only forty cents, but kept my mouth shut for fear of letting something slip. We returned to Petra's car and although I offered to let him have the front seat, citing that he had paid for everything, he declined again and climbed to the back.

"So, what is this place?" I asked, turning to Petra with my question as she began down the highway that led out of town. "Like, a lake, or," I trailed off, waiting for her answer.

"Kinda. There's a little hike, and a small waterfall. It's up in the mountains," Petra explained. "It's pretty ace, if you ask me, but since the place is pretty small, it gets really crowded if a lot of people come along."

"Right on," I nodded, opening my coke and taking a sip. I watched the condensation on the glass begin to form droplets as it ran down the sides of the bottle while Petra passed a slower car that had been ahead of us on the cracked two lane road. She lowered her window a little to let in some of the fresh air from the outside, and turned the radio on, but switched to the cassette player before any music began to play.

"What do you think, Levi? This a pretty cool spot?" Petra asked the silent peanut gallery.

"I guess. I mean, it's as cool as anywhere else," Levi muttered, taking a drink from his coke and leaning closer to the window.

"Why are you so grumpy, all of a sudden?" Petra asked, turning the music down and looking back at Levi for a second, who was about as interactive as a brick wall. "Run out of freak-weed or something? Just chill, dude."  
  


"I am chill," he said resolutely, shooting daggers at Petra with his eyes. "And yeah, I'm outta pot, what's that got to do with it?"

"Well, we're not that far out of town, do you wanna swing by your place and get some?" Petra asked, but Levi was quick to passionately refuse the offer.

"Absolutely not!" he snapped, before realizing how intensely he had denied her offer. He was quick to amend his tone, but retained his position. "Just keep driving. I'll be fine," he said, calming his voice a little, making me wonder why he had become so anxious, seeing as he wasn't exactly the emotional type. Something as simple as more weed shouldn't have startled him as badly as it did.

"You sure? I can just turn around real quick," Petra pushed gently, trying to allow Levi a moment to change his mind.

"Nah. I'm okay," he sighed, seemingly still reeling from whatever it was that had made him so explosive. "Really. Don't worry about it. I still have half a pack of cigarettes. I'll live."

"Okay," Petra nodded, speeding up to about five miles over the speed limit and turning her music back up. "Just checkin'."

We drove in a tense silence while the music played for about forty-five minutes, slowly making our way up one of the craggy, rigid mountains in the area until Petra found a spot to park on the side of the road beside an unmarked trailhead. She parked the car and climbed from the driver's seat, wrapping her towel around her shoulders, despite being fully clothed at that point. The clicking of her flip flops resonated against the asphalt as she made her way to the trunk of her car and pulled out a boombox while I turned and helped Levi out of the backseat by pushing the chair forward.

He must have tripped over something, as he fell forward as he stepped on the uneven ground in his sandals, reaching out and catching himself on the frame of Petra's car before I could even respond. I was a little stunned by his reflexes, as I thought he surely would have hit the ground. I knew that I would have, and snorted to myself when the thought crossed my mind.

"You good, man?" I asked and he nodded, walking to meet Petra at the trunk while I lagged behind him, effectively shut up.

"Carry this for me," Petra instructed, passing the boombox to Levi and retrieving the cassette tape from her car stereo. "I'll carry your towel. That's just really heavy after a while."

"I got it," Levi nodded, back to his nearly mechanical baseline tone of voice and starting ahead of us down the dirt path, disappearing into the trees before too long while I hung back to wait for Petra.

Once sure he was out of earshot, Petra began to speak. "What's his deal? Did he talk to you in the gas station?" Petra asked, but I was confused by the concept of that. I didn't understand why she would think Levi would talk to me about what was afflicting him, and so decided to ask her.

"Why would he talk to me?" I questioned, folding my arms around my towel. "He doesn't know me. I thought you might know what was going on."

"Nah. Me and Levi have this unspoken don't-ask-don't-tell agreement about pretty much everything. I know he's got my back, and that's all I need to know. I just figured he might wanna talk to you about whatever's got his panties in a twist," Petra replied, shrugging as she closed the trunk and locked her car.

"Right, but why? We're practically strangers," I pushed, growing ever more curious as to why she figured Levi would come to me with something like that.

"Well, I mean, he stole you for like an hour last night. Honestly I figured," she trailed off, as we made our way further into the lush forest, that came in stark contrast to the arid landscape where our town was placed. It was about fifteen degrees cooler than it had been at the base of the mountain, and I couldn't help but appreciate the change in climate. Deeper into the forest we marched, bugs and birds chirping in the conifers as we crunched the dead needles beneath our feet.

"You figured what?" I asked, looking over at her guarded expression, revealing nothing to me as she slid her round sunglasses up onto her forehead. Immediately, I was concerned by the look on her face.

"Nothing. Never mind," she sighed, walking closer to me than she had been before, less of a skip in her step as she continued down the path. "We just need to get him into a better mood."

"How do we do that?" I asked her, raising an eyebrow at the concept she'd presented while I pondered the solution myself.

"We gotta fuck with him a little. Get him riled up and distracted," she replied, pulling a ponytail holder from her wrist and pulling her mop of red hair up into a knot that then rested at the top of her head.

"Like how?" I asked, wondering how much longer we would have to walk before we caught up with Levi.

"Like, we gotta push him in or something," she said, contemplatively before an idea struck her so hard I could practically see the lightbulb turn on above her head. "Oh! I know. We need to mess with his cigarettes."

Worry flashed beneath my eyelids as I drew out an extended blink, trying to get my shock to properly convey. "That sounds like a terrible idea. He's already outta pot. We need to cut the guy a break, is what we need to do."

"Oh, so you're just gonna ask for my opinion, and then completely disregard it?" Petra laughed, walking into me and pushing me with her shoulder. "You gotta be joshin' me."

"Well, I was expecting a good idea. You're suggesting that we go on a fuckin' suicide mission," I chuckled in response as she bobbed her head under my free arm.

"Hey, I mean I'm just trying to give you the lowdown," she smiled, her earthy eyes twinkling, and reflecting the happy green of the forest to me while she spoke. "And here you are, off in la-la land, forgetting that I'm right."

"You're right if you want this to be your last day on Earth," I snorted, grabbing the bun on the top of her head and giving it a good shake. Even in the little time I knew him, I was able to pick up that he was very particular about certain things, and messing with his cigarettes seemed like one of the things he would not tolerate.

"Aw, come _on_ ," she groaned, pulling out from beneath my arm and stomping forward, curling her fingers through the belt loops of her high waisted jean shorts before turning her head towards me again, a sly smirk spreading her lips as a cunning expression flashed in her eyes. "What if I _dared_ you?"

"Well then obviously, that is a one sided contract that I must abide until I die," I laughed, rolling my eyes at her juvenile suggestion.

"Hm, that's what I thought," she said slowly, twisting her features into a contemplative scowl and stroking her chin between her thumb and forefinger in jest as we finally came into the clearing. Levi was perched on a rock that overlooked a choppy pool of water at the base of a small, but still noteworthy waterfall. His head looked up when he saw us approach the shore and our eyes met for only a moment before Petra pulled me down to her level and whispered into my ear. "I dare you to go flick his cigarette. Promise it'll snap him outta it," she said before pushing me forward so hard that I almost tripped over my own feet, catching myself as I jogged over to where Levi sat.

I sat down beside Levi and set my rolled towel behind me, figuring that I wouldn't get comfortable just yet, in case I was killed in the process of completing the dare. I hadn't been dared to do anything in nearly ten years, and so was quick to jump at the little bit of childhood that I hadn't even realized I had missed. "How are you?" I asked, trying to keep from smiling while I waited for a response.

"Keepin' it real," he muttered, taking a drag of his soon-to-be disrupted cigarette.

"Lighten up a little, man," I smiled, reaching forward and flicking the cigarette from his mouth. I hadn't intended for it to fall into the water and promptly saw my life flash before my eyes as it tumbled into the pond. I could feel the blood drain from my face as Levi processed what had just happened.

"You fucker, you're so dead," he snapped, smirking as he rose to his feet on the ledge and threw off the black wife beater he was wearing, kicking his shoes off as well. "Wrestling can't save you now, new kid."

"I thought New Kid had a name," I pointed out while I started to stand.

"Not right now, he doesn't," Levi hissed, throwing himself at me as soon as I had gotten to my feet, and we fell the fifteen feet off the ledge and plummeted into the deep, clear water below. While we fell, time slowed almost completely to a halt, and I watched as the world rushed up around us while Levi's arms constricted tighter around my waist. I popped up above the surface and gasped for air while I grappled with Levi, splashing him in the face while he bear-hugged my waist and started swimming us closer to shore. Before I could comprehend what was happening, he threw me over his shoulder and walked out of the water before tossing me into the grass like I weighed next to nothing.

"Hey! Hey!" I exclaimed, laughing as I tried to peel my sopping shirt from my torso, finally getting it off and kicking it to Petra, who was too busy bursting at the seams to catch it, so it slapped her directly in the face before it fell to the ground.

"Ah! Oh my God, Eren!" she squealed, lifting the shirt and throwing it in the direction of my towel. Levi was distracted, snidely chuckling at Petra's immediate offense taken from being hit with a wet shirt, and I took that moment to strike, sweeping his legs from beneath him and climbing on top of him.

"Oh, I don't think so, bitch," Levi snorted, grabbing onto my shoulders and flipping me over his head and onto my back again before I could protest. He must have thought he'd gotten me, but I used my new position to my advantage and wrapped my legs around Levi's neck, catching him in a headlock with my thighs.

To combat that, he rolled over, but froze when he realized that he was looking directly at my crotch. I grabbed him by the hair and pulled him up, taking note of the rosy flush his cheeks had adopted from the exertion we were both putting out. His head was dropped low, and his dog tags were cool as they rested on my skin while his chest heaved with every breath he took. He must have been some kind of Adonis in a past life, because I was taken aback by his superficial charm.

Keeping my legs wrapped around him, now dropped from his neck to his hips, I took a moment to catch my breath while he stared down at me. His eyes were glazed over and his pupils were wide, which was something I hadn't seen on him while he was sober. I took his pause as another opportunity to roll him onto his back with my hips, so that I was straddling his center of mass, and went for the choke, laughing as I gestured wrapping my hands around his neck.

"Gotcha," I grinned, resting my fingers around his throat, but not squeezing, as we were not actually fighting, unable to tell what was beads of sweat or drops of river water, but not really minding either way.

"I don't think so," he muttered, catching one of my wrists in his hand, and pressing a nerve that I didn't even know I had. I immediately recoiled and he took the chance to fling me off of him and take one of my arms into an arm bar. I winced at the backwards pressure being forced onto my arm by his hips, the zipper of his denim cutoffs digging into the back of my arm while I tried to think of a way to escape. I knew it was a long shot, but I figured that maybe I could attempt to speak to his empathy, happy that it also doubled as a way for me to gauge how much he actually possessed.

"Ow," I inhaled, straining against his hand that he was using to press the back of my heavily scraped hand to his abdomen. "Ow, ow, ow! My hand," I gasped and immediately the pressure on my arm ceased and Levi sat up.

"Are you okay?" he breathed, taking my injured hand into both of his and looking it over for further damage. Moving quickly, I pulled my hand from his and wrapped my arms around him, gently rolling him to the ground and resting on top of him, not so much as an act of aggression, but a display that I had gotten him.

"I win," I laughed, flicking the side of his head while he chuckled beneath me, the crooked smile on his face making all of my efforts suddenly worth it. Not just the wrestling, but everything. I hadn't seen him smile before, not once in either timeline, and I felt as though I had just made a very subtle breakthrough. I had already begun to appeal to him, whether he realized it or not, and that, in and of itself, was worth celebrating.

I remained with my arms around his waist while we caught our breath, resting my head on his chest and waiting for Petra to approach us. When she did, she was stripped down to her striped yellow and white bikini and grinning wildly at us while she dropped to a squat at Levi's feet. I watched as the breeze caught the ruffle on the top piece, rippling it across her chest while she played with Levi's hair.

"Better?" she asked, dragging her porcelain fingertips through his thick, jet hair.

"Better," Levi scoffed in affirmation, patting my head and beginning to sit up. "Alright, get off. Stop touching me. We came here to swim, let's fucking swim."

I nodded and climbed off of him, standing up and dusting myself off, picking pieces of wet grass off of my skin while Petra ran to the boombox at the top of the rock ledge and turned it on, blasting music loudly from her speakers.

"Gimme some skin, brat, that was a good fight," Levi muttered, holding up a fist, which I hit with my own, smiling at him while our knuckles collided. "Ya got me with that juke." I nodded, casting a smile in his direction as Petra began waving her arms at us from the top of the ledge.

"Watch this!" Petra exclaimed, getting our attention while Levi and I waded in deeper from the shore, looking up at her as we walked further into the water. "Ready?" she asked, throwing a thumb into the air while she waited for our confirmation.

"Yeah!" I called back while Levi threw a subtle thumbs-up in her direction.

Petra walked gingerly to the edge of the ledge and turned so that her back was now facing it. She then sprang backwards from the ledge and pulled off a flawless gainer, spinning like she was a piece of paper caught on a powerful gust of wind, before positioning herself into a backwards swan dive mid-air, slicing the water with her extended arms as she finally broke the surface. I was absolutely blown away by her talent in that particular field, not having expected something like that in the slightest. The best I could pull off was a cannonball. I rushed towards her to congratulate her when her head popped up above the surface, tendrils of wet hair clinging to her face as she pulled her hair tie from her strawberry mane, letting it fall down from her head and cascade down her shoulders like a red waterfall.

"That was killer, Ral," Levi said, a bemused frown painting his lips while he approached us from behind me.

"Yeah, that was really cool," I agreed. "Execution was top notch."

"Oh yeah? Lemme see whatcha got, foxes," Petra sniffed, turning her nose up in the air and folding her arms at us, willing either one of us to top what she had just pulled off.

"I don't think I could top that one, brat," Levi muttered, eyeing the ledge wistfully.

"You could, but you're too much of a baby," Petra hedged, pushing Levi's shoulder.

"How?" he asked, throwing his hands up in confusion.

"Remember that time you did a _double backflip_?!" she exclaimed, a giddy, childlike expression taking over her delicate features while she grinned wider at her friend.

"That was one time, Petra, and I think you're remembering it differently than I am, because _I_ remember almost snapping my neck," Levi snapped, shoving a handful of water in her direction.

"Whatever you say, you dope," she grinned. "But if you can pull it off, I'll buy your pot next time you restock."

"Don't have to tell me twice," Levi snorted, walking out of the water and climbing up the ledge, bopping his head along to the David Bowie song that played in the background. He stood at the edge of the rock and looked down at us. "Kneel, pigs," he called to us while I took a moment to appreciate his glistening body, and wondered how much work it had taken him to maintain it. He wasn't bulky by any means, but every muscle in his body screamed predator as he shifted his weight with folded arms, and every posture he possessed was chock-full of subtle intimidation. My heart was still hammering as my thoughts lingered on our wrestling match. My mind was stuck remembering odd details, like the way his hair felt between my fingers, and the butterflies I had gotten while we fell into the water together.

Forcing myself to focus on Levi I watched as he jumped backwards and made two full rotations with his knees tucked to his chest, and was on his way to making a third when he collided with the water, resonating a sickening smack. Petra and I weren't worried immediately, but as more time passed, and we hadn't seen him resurface, we began to wade out further to search for him in case he needed help. I reached the spot first and Petra let out a scream from behind me. Whipping around to see what had startled her, I saw a pair of white arms grab her from behind, and Levi's head rest on her shoulder.

"Boo, bitch. Can you spell _IOU_?" he snickered, pressing his face into her neck. "That was at least two."

"But you missed the landing entirely," she scoffed while I moved closer to them. Levi released Petra and folded his arms, looking away from me when our eyes met, making me wonder how long he'd been watching me walk across the pond.

"You never asked me to stick the landing. You only asked for a double backflip. I gave you a double backflip, and now you owe me the Devil's lettuce," Levi argued, setting his jaw and staring hard into her eyes.

"Fine, fine," she conceded, lifting her hands in surrender, before using them to push her hair behind her shoulders, even longer now that it was wet. "I'll buy your pot."

"Thank you," Levi nodded. "Pleasure doing business with you." He looked at me again, and I froze when our eyes met, like a deer trapped in a set of headlights. His eyes looked clear in the direct sunlight, like pools of gentle mist and I was blown away for a moment. Staring into his captivating eyes, it seemed like he was just as stunned as I was, by whatever he saw in mine.

"Whatever, man," Petra groaned, snapping both of us out of our trances and channeling our attention back towards her. "You want a Hertz donut?"

"A what?" I asked, looking up at her while Levi rolled his eyes. She reached forward and flicked the side of his head.

"Hurts, don' it?" She cackled, doubling over at her own joke. I couldn't keep the smile off my face any longer, and Levi's eyes caught mine once more. He scoffed quietly and shook his head at us.

"Are you twelve or something, Ral?" Levi snorted, pushing his fingers through his dripping black hair. "Haven't heard that since junior high."

"Your point?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow at the boy while he pushed her into the water with barely a flick of his wrist. She squealed as she went under, and I watched the bubbles of her breath pop as they reached the surface before she came back up.

"That's my point, chick," he snapped when she popped her head above the water and rose to her feet again, small rivulets winding down her slim frame as the water from the pool rushed back to its source.

"That didn't even make any sense!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation before letting them fall to her sides, hitting her elbow on her hip bone and wincing. "Ow, that was my funny bone!" she shouted, curling over and dropping to her knees, laughing at herself almost as hard as we were laughing at her.

"Smooth play, Shakespeare," Levi snorted, reaching down to help her up, but she slapped his hand away.

"Go away, dickhead," she griped, standing up on her own and playfully glaring at her friend. "C'mon, I wanna see what Jeager can do."

We spent several hours at the idyllic natural pool, playing in the waterfall until the day had waned away, and the sun was well past set, the twilight fading from the deep purple sky into night. We were exhausted by the time we left the waterfall, and I was more than a little excited to pass out in my bed, but when I got home, Farlan and Isabel seemed to have other plans.

 **A/N: You're welcome for the gratuitous wrestling...** 👀👀👀 **... Have a good week. See you mothersuckers later.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaand now you're all caught up with wattpad. I'll start posting updates every Wednesday.


	9. Chapter 7

After Petra and Levi had gone, wishing me a good rest of my weekend as they pulled out of my driveway, I made my way back inside of my house. Upon my entry, I found Isabel and Farlan, sitting at the dinner table, listening to a muffled voice coming from a cassette player that had replaced the floral centerpiece. Both of them looked up at me as soon as I stepped through the threshold, and Farlan pressed pause on the tape before Isabel began to speak.

“Come here, Eren,” Isabel said quietly, her features drawn into a grave focus while she waved me over to the table. I could feel my brain turn from the exciting day I’d had to strictly business almost as easily as turning off a lightswitch. Any budding friendships were pushed to the wayside as Farlan rewound the tape to the beginning. “About time,” he snorted, pausing it so that it wouldn’t begin to play out of turn.

“Don’t worry, hun, you didn’t miss much. We were only a few seconds in. You hungry?” she asked, but I shook my head, too curious about what Hanji had sent us to have any sort of viable appetite. “Suit yourself,” she shrugged, pressing play on the tape while I took a seat beside her. I watched her chew on her lip while we waited for Hanji to begin speaking.

_ “Hey guys!”  _ a chipper voice exclaimed, and I could hear a chair scooting in the background of the audio, as though she was in such a hurry that she was only just then sitting down to speak with us _.  _

_ “My client has been unconscious for nearly forty-eight hours at the recording of this tape, which means that you have been back for twelve days!”  _ My jaw drop was audible in response to how little time had passed. Doing a bit of quick mental math, I came to realize that the entire two years I would be back there would only be two months to the people in the standard timeline. I decided that I would ask her about how that was so when I got the chance. Still utterly dumbfounded, I continued to listen to her recording.

_ “I’m about to get off work for the day, and wanted to get any updates you had for me. Tell me about my client’s characteristics, and anything you have been able to conjecture based on what you have seen thus far.”  _ She paused for a moment, before letting out a rushed sigh. _ “It’s really weird recording this, because it feels like I’m just talking to myself, which I am, but I digress. How are the three of you acclimating to the 1970s? It was only twenty years ago, but I feel like so much has changed.” _

_ “I guess this first note is to simply re-establish the guidelines. Remember, you are to simply befriend Levi. Nothing more, nothing less. Be his sole confidant, and if he wants to talk about something dark that’s troubling him, you need to listen to him, without expressing judgement,”  _ she continued _. “This includes Magnolia and Church to an extent, as the closer Eren becomes to my client, the odds of him coming to your home increase. I expect all three of you to be hospitable, nothing less than the family the three of you would have wanted growing up. Be his second family, because oftentimes, those are more important than your blood,”  _ she paused another moment, like she had been briefly taken by a bout of wistful imaginings. 

_ “Now, Eren,”  _ she said abruptly, snapping out of her stupor to give more information.  _ “Against the judge’s wishes, I’m saying again that you can commit petty crimes, like underage drinking to blend in with the times, because you are of actual legal age to be doing so. This courtesy does not extend to statutory rape. As you are surrounded by minors, you are not to have sex with any of them. Just so that we’re crystal clear on where the boundaries in my exceptions lie. Statutory rape is still a felnony and will be treated as such in a court of law.” _

I nodded, almost imagining she could see me, but that had already been discussed in the debriefing, so I wasn’t sure why it was being brought up again.

_ “I don’t care how foxy the chick is,”  _ she cackled, the chair creaking in the background of the audio once again. I could almost see her nose crinkle up as she laughed at her own joke. _ “See what I did there?”  _ she snorted, before taking a long breath and speaking again _. “Ah, I crack myself up,”  _ she sighed, dispersing any lingering amusement with the single breath. _ “Okay, back to business. I have not noticed a change in my documents yet, but I assume it will begin to happen soon. Eren, did you go to the party on Friday night? Tell me how it went if you did, because something that I believe to be very crucial would have happened on Friday night, unless you’ve prevented it. Look, that’s all I have for you today, folks. I gotta go meet my husband for dinner. Ciao,”  _ she said as the recording finally cut. Isabel and Farlan exchanged a look that I didn’t understand before turning to me and speaking. I wondered how Hanji could have known about the party, but assumed I would figure out soon enough. 

“Okay. Here’s how this is gonna go,” Isabel started, pushing her hair behind her ears and staring at the tape player at the center of the dinner table. “You talk, and I’ll take notes. Once that’s finished, I’ll put them all together and summarize for Hanji. At the end, the two of you can add whatever else you need to say. That way it’ll be clear, and agreed upon when she gets the tape back. Fair?”

Farlan and I nodded, our heads bobbing slightly out of sync while we clarified that we understood. She pushed up the sleeves of her respectably floral dress and pulled a pen from the pocket of her apron. “Isn’t the apron a little,” I trailed off wondering what the end of my sentence would have been.

“A little what?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow up at me while she stood to grab her notepad from the coffee table. It was concealed between two magazines, which I never would have thought of if I had been the one to hide it, but it worked just as well. I realized with a soft chuckle to myself that the teenage boy in me would have hidden it beneath my mattress.

“I dunno,” I shrugged while she crossed the room and sat down beside me again. “It’s just weird, because in school, I read a lot of your studies, so it’s pretty weird to see you playing Suzie-homemaker.”

“Well, I’m playing a role, Eren. Just like Farlan, and just like you. If I have to be Ms. Nuclear-Family to prevent a couple dozen homicides, then so be it,” Isabel said while Farlan seemed to hang onto her every word, nodding along while she answered me. 

“That’s fair,” I said while Isabel clicked the back of her pen and looked up at me.

“So, Eren, what happened at that party? Hanji seemed pretty adamant about that towards the end, so we’ll start there.” Isabel watched me intently while she jotted down notes as I spoke. I told them everything that had gone down, to the best of my recollection, detailing the altercation between Zeke and the two of us after he had hit Petra. I told them about the walk that Levi and I had taken afterwards, mentioning that I had smoked weed when Farlan held a hand up.

“That doesn’t need to go in the report,” Farlan said quietly, and I felt a quiet relief that he would cover for me on something like that. Isabel scribbled out the beginnings of the sentence she was writing and nodded.

“Right. No use telling them that,” she smiled, blinking her wide cerulean eyes at her counterpart. “It isn’t like we wanna implicate you,” she said, turning to me and offering the same warm smile. “Continue, Eren.”

“Right, okay, so,” I began again, talking about everything else that I might have missed, leaving no stone unturned until Isabel was satisfied with her line of questioning. She quickly moved on to ask me more questions about my overall opinion of Levi thus far, which I answered to the best of my ability.

“He’s a little weird, but not, like  _ murder _ -weird. The person he is right now is not capable of murder,” I replied, thinking back to how severely he had threatened Zeke, that I had now been forced to mention, as Hanji was asking for it.

“But the threats?” Isabel questioned, reading my mind.

“I’d have threatened the bastard, too,” I nodded, not sure what else to say.

“I hope we all would have,” Farlan agreed, folding his arms and tipping backwards in his chair. “I’ve threatened people for my sister before. You don’t see me going around and committing atrocious crimes. Eren’s saying he isn’t worried, yet, and I’m gonna trust his call.”

“Okay, then. If this blows up, don’t be surprised when I say I told you so,” Isabel muttered, shaking her head at her notes. “Why didn’t you say that last night?” she asked. “You need to tell us these things, Eren.”

“I know,” I sighed, frustrated with myself for intentionally keeping it from them. “I’m sorry. I didn’t wanna worry either of you, because it didn’t feel like an issue,” I nodded, dragging a hand through the tangled brown mop on the top of my head. “But now that Hanji’s mentioned it, I guess I just kinda felt like I should disclose it to her.”

“But not to us?” Farlan asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “Lemme play devil’s advocate here for a sec. If you’ve already failed to mention something involving a death threat, what’s to say you would tell us if he actually killed somebody, or was violent with no real reason to do so? A truly neutral party likely would have at least mentioned it to us. I didn’t get my degree to have anybody be deceitful to me while I’m just trying to do my job.”

“Hey, Farlan, it’s okay,” Isabel nodded, reaching out to touch his arm as he returned his chair level with the table. “He’s obviously telling us now, and frankly-”

“Look, I’m just trying to get him to see the point that  _ you’re _ trying to make to him. I’m helping  _ you _ , right now, Isabel,” Farlan debated, lifting his hands up and looking intently at his de-facto wife.

“I know, but I think he gets it. You don’t need to throw conspiracy theories out here. He’s just a kid. He just didn’t see it-” Isabel started to say before I jumped in.

“Hey, I’m twenty-four,” I corrected Isabel, but she and Farlan only started to laugh.

“You’re a little baby compared to me,” Isabel snorted. “I’m forty-three. You’re practically in diapers, Sweetie. The fact that you can still believably pull off being a sixteen year-old should speak volumes. I’d be called a pervert if I tried pretending I was sixteen.”

“Yeah, but I’m an  _ adult _ . I can drive, I can smoke, I can drink. I was born in ‘seventy-two,” I argued, feeling like I needed to do something to prove to them that I deserved to be at that table just as much as they did. 

“So then you’re three years old right now,” Farlan snorted before his face adopted a grave expression, his silver eyes looking like they belonged to somebody much older than him. “Look, kid. You are the key component to the success of this trial. There’s only so much support Isabel and I can provide him when we’re integrated. This all rests on your shoulders and it’s sure as hell not something I could have pulled off at twenty-four. I was way too concerned with myself. You need to get out of your own head a little, and let us decide what we need to know about and what we don’t. We need you to act in ways that benefit Levi in the long run, not what you  _ think _ will help, but ends up backfiring later. I know it seems like everything’s all in good fun right now, but your every waking moment should be used to prevent these crimes from taking place.  _ Please _ .”

“Right. I’m sorry. I’ll make sure not to skip anything next time,” I sighed, and Isabel reached over and rested a hand on my shoulder. I could tell there was true understanding behind her gesture, and I vowed to not mislead them again. 

“You’re a sweet kid, but far too trusting for a future lawyer. It’s gonna screw you over unless you get a hold on it,” Isabel said quietly, before switching the direction of the conversation to something less heavy. The tension in the room was palpable, and I appreciated Isabel’s attempt to diffuse it. “But this has been kinda a downer. If you eat all your vegetables, and answer the rest of my questions, I see ice cream in our very near future. I need to make sure you maintain your physique, so I’m supposed to monitor your diet a little, make sure you’re eating enough. This amount of stress tends to decrease the appetite, so I’m gonna need you to grab a plate and power through it. It wasn’t that bad. I’m not the cook my mother was, but I’m damn close.”

“Yeah, it was good, Eren,” Farlan nodded. “Grab a plate and come back. We’re not finished with you yet.”

“Oh joy,” I muttered, scoffing at Farlan’s words while I rose from my seat to serve up a plate of dinner. It was some kind of casserole that smelled good enough, and my rumbling stomach seemed to agree with me. Subsisting on chips and cola was not exactly the diet of the gods, I noted to myself with a sigh while I returned to my seat to be drilled even more. I had to remind myself with every question that I had signed up for that. I had signed up to prevent murders, and that required being forthright in every manner of the word. 

I wondered what Armin was up to, whether he was home yet from the trip, or if trials were still going on, despite the lack of a defendant. I decided I would make a point to ask about my friend when I got the chance. I nibbled at my meal, taking small bites at first, but as my stomach reminded me how hungry I was, I began to eat faster and finished my plate before Isabel even finished asking me questions.

“This doesn’t mean we’re gonna rat on you about everything, we just need to know what’s important to the case. You’re our guy, Eren, but we need to figure out how to protect you without getting you in trouble for things,” Isabel began. “But that’s enough of my questions. Any notes?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at me while her pen idled on the page.

“Uh, kinda. I wanna know why the party was important, because it isn’t mentioned at all in his case files,” I replied, looking between Farlan and Isabel, but neither of them seemed to know either.

“We actually weren’t briefed on it either,” Farlan said with a sigh. “Ms. Zoe seems to have a pretty hands off method. Iz, why don’t you put that down to ask about?”

“Alright,” she said, and I could hear the calming sound of the pen scratching the paper while she inscribed the question. “Anything else?”

“Out of personal curiosity, I would like to know how time is slowed down for us, and I wanna know how my friend, Armin Arlert, is doing,” I replied, and Isabel began writing again with a single nod of her head.

“What about you, Farlan? Anything?” She asked.

“No, I’ve got a pretty clear picture, other than what Eren’s already asking about,” Farlan sighed, resting his chin in his hands.

“You okay, Farlan?” Isabel asked, setting her pen down and looking up at her partner. 

“I’m fine. Just tired,” he nodded. “If you two want ice cream, the keys are over by the toaster. I’m gonna turn in after we get this done.”

“Alright,” Isabel replied, standing and pulling a recording device from a drawer in the kitchen and sitting down again, pulling a fresh tape from her apron. “See? Aprons are pretty useful. All this pocket space, Eren,” she giggled, slipping her hand into the deep pocket of her apron, and lifting it to show me. We recorded the tape and listened to it over again for accuracy before placing it in a small box alongside the tape that Hanji had sent us. 

“I’ll take this in on Monday. Goodnight, guys,” Farlan nodded, clearing his plate and taking the box to bed with him while Isabel turned to me, an excited grin on her face.

“Now that work’s all done and over with, we can have some fun. Whaddaya say? No hard feelings?” She asked, extending a hand to me while I stared at my empty plate. 

“Nah, I get it. That was my bad. I’ll do better when it comes up again,” I said, extending a smile in return while I took her hand. “Is ice cream still on the table?”

“Obviously,” she said. “Get the keys.”

We went for ice cream that night and enjoyed the lackadaisical break from all of the seriousness regarding our new jobs, driving through the moonlit town and cooling off with a sweet ice cream cone. 

“So Eren,” Isabel said, smiling gently at me from across the table at the ice cream parlor, the fluorescents lighting her hair ablaze. “Are you doing alright so far? You think you’re immersing yourself okay?” she asked before shaking her head. “No. We’re taking a break. Don’t answer that. I don’t wanna know anything about work.”

“Good, because I probably wouldn’t have answered it anyway,” I snorted, licking some of the chocolate ice cream as it dripped down the side of the cone. “My brain is fried. I’ve done more mental chess in the last two weeks than the rest of my college experience combined.”

“I bet. Everything you do in his presence has to be calculated down to the expression on your face when you say something. I can only imagine that that’s gonna be taxing,” Isabel said with a sigh. “I’m impressed with your mental gymnastics, kiddo, but I understand needing a break, so I’m gonna suggest you and me do something like this once a week, to get your mind off things. How does that sound? Saturday night ice cream break?”

“Absolutely,” I chuckled, happily taking her up on her offer of a little bit of peace and quiet that didn’t happen to be work related. We finished our ice cream and traveled home, and I was excited by the new concept of a little bit of a break from it all. Sunday had been rather boring, and I jumped at the opportunity to help Farlan mow the lawn, as it provided  _ something _ to do other than watch the same ten TV channels, or lay around in my room and stare at the wallpaper.

The next week was no better, and the only solace I found from the painstakingly slow school week was in tagging along with Petra and Levi while they found trouble wherever they traveled to. Tuesday had been a drive to a nearby town with more stores, and I looked the other direction while they grabbed things without paying for them. Wednesday, we had gone to Petra’s house and gotten absolutely trashed, perfectly content to just sit and laugh at each other in our doped-up state of mind. Friday night, we had gone out with Riko and Ollie, up to the watering hole that they were sad they had missed the week before. We had built a small fire a little ways from the shore and roasted hot dogs with sticks we’d found in the woods. The next day, it was the five of us again, and we took a different hiking trail up to the edge of a jagged cliff to watch the sun set, and I felt almost completely blended with them, like I had been a member of their little clique all along. 

I got on swimmingly with Petra and Ollie, and was even beginning to grow on Riko, who had initially had some inhibitions about the new guy joining their tight little circle, but Levi still was a perfect enigma. He had a constant couldn’t-be-assed attitude, and a bored scowl to match, but despite his blase, take it or leave it mannerisms, he seemed to be what bound the group together somehow. It was interesting to see how the rest of the kids interacted with him, casual enough to be considered friendly, but with an air of reverence, like he was some kind of religious figure. 

They would crack jokes amongst themselves, but would always turn to Levi after the punch line, and their body language told me that they were likely seeking approval. He was their greatest critic, and so when they could amuse him with their senses of humor, it seemed like a big deal. It wasn’t often that he smiled organically, so if they said something that made him let out even a ghost of a laugh, all of them would band in and point it out. During times like those, I came to the realization that if people pointed out every time I even cracked a smile, I also would have made an effort not to do so. 

By the time the next Saturday had rolled around, and Petra had dropped me off at my house for the night, I found Isabel and Farlan in the middle of another dinner without me. They waved me over to the table and we ate our food almost like we were a real family before Isabel reminded me that it was ice cream time once again. She told me to help her clear the table before we left, and I did as I was told, standing from the table with my empty plate. “Dinner was really good, by the way. Thanks for cooking,” I commented, setting my dishes in the sink that was full of soapy water before retrieving the car keys and leading the way to the garage. I let Isabel drive when she asked and we pulled out of the garage without another word.

“Damn, the seventies had some good music,” Isabel mused, something about the look in her eyes both ecstatic and melancholy in the same moment. “I remember being so excited when all of these songs came out the first time.”

“Oh yeah, old timer?” I snorted and the look of disgust on her face was indescribably adorable. She maintained a childlike youth about her, and I never would have guessed that she was nearly twice my age. 

“Do you have a death wish or something?” she laughed, turning onto the main drag through town and heading south as we looked for potential ice cream prospects. “They’ll never find your body, son.” I winced when she reached across the center console and flicked my temple. As we approached the edge of town, we came across an ice cream parlor boasting twenty flavors with a handmade sign resting in one of their windows. As we were about to turn into the parking lot, I noticed a figure beginning to slowly disappear down the dark highway out of town. Squinting in the darkness, I saw that whoever it was looked a lot like Levi from the back.

“Look over there,” I instructed, pointing in the man’s direction. “Is that Levi?” I asked and instantly Isabel’s expression shifted from quiet amusement to something of acute focus.

“It sure looks like the pictures, but what’s he doing? Where’s he going?” She asked, pulling into a parking spot and cutting the engine so she could get a better look. “Would it be too much to ask if he needs a ride?”

“No, let’s go,” I nodded, and Isabel turned on the engine again. “Follow my lead.”

“Right,” she said, letting out a breath while we caught up to where Levi was walking, slowing down and cranking the window down so that he could hear us when we spoke.

Levi looked at us when we began to drive beside him, slowing down to a crawl in order to keep pace with him. “Eren? What are you doing?” he asked while I waved him down through the window. Isabel pulled off into the emergency lane and parked the car. She hung back while I climbed out of the passenger side and approached the boy while he froze and stared at the car, his gunmetal eyes suddenly wide and panic-stricken. 

“What are  _ you _ doing? Did Petra not drive you home?” I asked, folding my arms at him skeptically. The expression on his face was enough to fill novels, if somebody could understand the language he was speaking in.

“She did- I mean, I-” he stuttered, like he was having a hard time coming up with a story to feed me. He cut himself off and stood in silence until I said something. 

“Look, my aunt Isabel and I are gonna grab some ice cream. Join us, and we’ll give you a ride home,” I suggested hesitantly, knowing that I could potentially scare him off with something like that, but it was a risk I was willing to take.

“No. I don’t need your charity,” Levi snapped, running his fingers through his hair and resting his hands on the top of his head when he was through. “Thanks for the offer.”

“Levi, this isn’t charity. Think of it as a thank you,” I smiled like a true humanitarian, restraining myself from giving the poor kid a hug. 

“For what? I did jack shit,” Levi demanded, a certain dominance in the quiet inflections of his raspy voice, despite the low volume.

“Well, for the fun day we had, and for helping me out that first night,” I explained, taking a step closer to him. He stood his ground, but I could tell his resolve was wavering. “How far is your pad?”

“I- I-” He began to choke on his words again, but caught himself and uttered a simple, “Far,” and that was all I needed to know. “I don’t need your help.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” I agreed, trying to placate him a little, to show him he didn’t need to fend me off, too. “But just let me help you, so that I can feel philanthropic alright, man? We won’t talk about it, okay? Nobody has to know. Just lemme help you.”

“No,” he muttered, folding his arms at me.

“At least let me get you something to eat. Have you had anything to eat other than those chips on the hike today?” I asked, lifting my arms in frustration at his adamant declining of my offer. 

“What’s it to you, anyway?” he snorted, shaking his head at me incredulously. “You really just wanna make sure I get home safely? And, for your information, Mrs. Ral made scrambled eggs this morning, not that that was any of your business.”

“Yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to say! I just wanna make sure some crazy person doesn’t run you over or something! That’s all I’m trying to do!”

“Bullshit,” he muttered, reaching up to cover his mouth defensively, rolling his eyes at me while I spoke.

“Why do you think that’s bullshit?” I asked. “I have no reason to lie to you, Levi. None at all. Please. Just think about it for me.”

“No, go ahead. It’s fine,” Levi sighed, unfolding his arms and shoving them into his pockets. “I’ve answered your question, I’ve eaten today. You have no more need to be like this.”

“Like how? I’m just trying to help,” I replied. “You don’t have to know somebody to wanna help them.”

“See? There it is! You wanna help me, because you think I’m some kinda defenseless runt,” Levi said, shifting his weight between his hips. While we spoke, the spotlight provided by the headlights blocked out the stars I’d begun to realize I couldn’t live without. Even for those few moments, I missed them.

“Actually, you’re wrong. Why do you think nobody messes with you? I’ve known you for all of a couple weeks, and I already know that. I know where you stand on the food chain. You don’t have anything to prove to me. I’ve seen you hold your own firsthand. Just lemme do this for you. I’ll pay.”

Levi let out a long sigh, looking first at his feet for what seemed like several hours before finally looking up at me. “Fine, but only because you won’t stop nagging me. Don’t think I’ll let this happen again. I don’t need your help, brat.”

“I know,” I nodded, stepping one step closer to him and putting my hands on his shoulders. As soon as I touched him, his body seemed to freeze up, like he’d suddenly turned to stone, but his eyes were swimming, looking anywhere but me. “Thank you. We won’t ever talk about this again. I promise.”

“Good,” he grumbled, staring at his feet once again. “If I hear one word,” he trailed off, his grey eyes shimmering in the headlights of the station wagon.

“You know that this means I get to give you shotgun, right?” I snickered, gently pushing one of his shoulders before returning my hands to my sides.

“Not a chance, bitch,” he said, slyly eyeing me while I turned and walked with him to the car.

“Hey, aunt Iz, this is Levi. From school. Levi, this is my aunt Iz. On my dad’s side,” I shrugged while I climbed into the back seat before Levi could get the chance to, but much to my dismay, he slid into the back seat right beside me, not taking the seat I’d given him. The smug smirk on his face told me everything I needed to know. He’d done it just to spite me.

“Hi honey, I’m Isabel. Nice to meet you,” she said, smiling as she extended a hand back towards him, which he took and shook firmly, just like he would have 20 years later. That much certainly hadn’t changed, I realized with a snort. “I’m glad to see Eren’s already making friends.”

Levi was mostly nonverbal, letting out a grunt of agreement and giving her a fake half grin. It was obviously ingenuous, as I had seen him genuinely smiling about week prior, and was certain it would be ingrained into my memory until the day I died.

It was another clear night, and when I looked over at Levi, his skin was a pallid blue, just like the night prior. In the darkness, I was able to take in his features without looking like a weirdo until we pulled into the light of the ice cream parlor. He had a striking profile, his long, slender nose ever so gently curving up at the tip. His narrowed, skeptical eyes and softly parted lips made me wonder how he didn’t have girls absolutely clinging to him, but figured his aloof, exclusive demeanor was enough to ward off any unwanted attention.

We exited the wood paneled station wagon and ambled into the ice cream parlor. I had seldom seen a place so empty as that ice cream place at nine thirty on a Saturday night, but despite that, we still made our way to the counter to order. I was relieved to see that they had a small menu of actual food and before Levi could protest I ordered a corn dog for him and placed my money on the table. Levi rolled his eyes at me while the cashier tallied up our orders and started scooping ice cream. I watched as the scooper rolled a ball of vanilla and placed it in a cone for Levi. Isabel had paid for the ice cream, but I insisted on paying for the corn dog, as an olive branch of sorts for Levi.

“Vanilla? Really?” I snorted, lifting an eyebrow up at the boy as he rocked back and forth on his feet, impatiently waiting for our ice cream cones to be scooped for us. “ _ Vanilla _ ?”

“I dunno what to tell you; vanilla is my favorite,” he scoffed while an ear worm from the nineties wriggled its way into my ear. Before I knew it, I was humming the lyrics to that stupid Seal song, and I got a reprimanding look from Isabel as soon as she recognised it. Both of us froze for a second when Levi asked what song I was humming.

With Isabel’s eyes not so subtly fixed on me, I realized that I would have been far better equipped to answer his question if I hadn’t had the pressure of disappointing her resting on my shoulders. Luckily, as soon as I opened my mouth to make a snarky comment about it being an original, the server brought out Levi’s corn dog.

We sat and slowly ate our ice cream, Levi only eating when he felt like we weren’t looking at him, but in record time, whether we were watching or not, the corn dog disappeared, and when I looked at him again, the wooden stick was wrapped neatly in a napkin for quick disposal. “So where ya from, Son?” Isabel asked, resting her chin on her fist and leaning forward to speak to him.

“Oh, uh, you know. Around,” he shrugged, taking the first bite of his ice cream cone, and closing his eyes, like he hadn’t had ice cream in a long time and was trying to savor the one chance he got. “I’m from here, basically.”

“You seem awful hesitant, Honey. You okay?” she asked, taking another mouthful of her mint chip cone while she waited for his response.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” Levi nodded, not willing to disclose any further information to a complete stranger, which I understood. When he looked at me again, he narrowed his eyes for a second before speaking. “You have a- a-” he motioned towards my upper lip. “Bit of a moustache going on.” I had never seen him so jumpy before, but again, I had no idea if that was his norm or not, as I’d only known him six days or so. He was not timid in any manner, but certainly on edge.

“Do I?” I asked, grabbing another napkin from the holder and wiping off my mouth. “Better?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t looked like a fool, but unsure if that was avoidable, all things considered.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding more like a spoken breath than actual dialogue while I tried to keep myself from humming the song again. We finished up our food and cleared the trash from our table before thanking the server and walking back out into the warm summer night. I slid into the backseat wordlessly, and wordlessly, Levi followed, his ebony hair reflecting the lights of the store while he sat in the other window seat. 

“Thank you Ms,” he trailed off, waiting for Isabel to fill in the blank.

“Magnolia-Jeager,” she informed him with a quick nod. “And don’t worry about it. Like I said, I’m just glad Eren’s making friends so fast.”

“Sure,” he muttered, turning to me and speaking much quieter while Isabel pulled out of the parking space. “You didn’t have to do that,” he whispered.

“No, I didn’t. But I did anyway,” I affirmed in the same hushed tone of voice. In a leap of confidence, I reached over and gave his knee a quick pat before retracting my arm. “You’re welcome.”

“So, where are we headed, Levi?” Isabel asked. 

“Do you know where Roosevelt lane is?” he asked, pointing North, towards the center of town, in the opposite direction of where he'd been walking.

“I’m sure I can figure it out,” she nodded, driving in the direction he had pointed. “What were you doing walking outta town, then?” she asked. “It’s getting late,” she added when he didn’t respond for a moment.

“I was just taking a walk,” he replied, the monotony blending into his words once more. I could almost guarantee that he was lying, based on everything I knew, and was growing more curious by the second to see where he was leading us.

“Walks are so refreshing. I need to start taking more walks,” she sighed wistfully, driving further into town and humming the same Seal song she had reprimanded me about, the earworm having spread quickly from one person to the next.

Driving slowly, she came across a side street named Roosevelt and paused at the red light, inquiring which direction to turn in.

“Left,” Levi told her calmly, like he knew exactly where he was planning to go. “Then stay straight until it changes to McCarson Avenue, and swing a right. I’m the third house on the right. Red mailbox. You can’t miss it.”

“Alrighty, thanks hon,” Isabel smiled, driving down the side streets just as Levi had instructed before pulling up to a small, brown brick house with the red mailbox. There were lights on and when Isabel rolled down the window, I could hear a baby bawling loudly from inside the house. He climbed out and thanked us for the ride and Isabel waited on the curb to make sure he got inside alright. 

He looked back at us one last time, perhaps to check if we’d left already, and I saw his shoulders slump when he knocked on the door. Before too long, a woman with gnarled black hair, swung the front door open, the crying child attached to her hip. I couldn’t hear what she was saying to him, but one of her bony, frail looking hands shot forward and gripped him by the ear, shouting unintelligible nonsense at him while he stood and took it like he was the sea wall to her rogue wave. 

She was obviously intoxicated, the way she wobbled on her feet while she stood. Isabel and I watched in stunned, silent horror while she shouted at him. She released his ear only so that she could jab her finger into his chest, and as I began to pick up more words, I realized that she wasn’t even speaking English at all; her temper tantrum was all happening in German. I felt an immediate, crushing guilt slam me a thousand times over for even pointing him out to Isabel. If I had just kept my mouth shut, that wouldn’t have happened. When her hand went for the collar of his shirt, and he still stood as still as a soldier and took the beating, I decided that it was time for me to step in. I climbed out of the car and sprinted across the yard at him just as, who I assumed was his mother began to pull him into the house by his neck. I caught his arm before he crossed through the doorway and pulled him back out.

“Look, Ma’am,” I said calmly, in an attempt to diffuse the situation. “If it’s that much of a hassle, he can just stay at our place for the night.” Levi’s mother froze in her tracks, white hot rage radiating from her entire being while I held firmly to Levi’s arm.

Levi yanked his mother’s hand from his shirt and nodded slowly at me, his face drawn into an expressionless gaze. “Gute Nacht,  _ Mutti _ ,” I caught him say through his teeth, though I wasn’t sure what that meant. “Entschuldigung, dass ich deinen verdammten Tag ruiniert habe,” he snapped while she slammed the door in his face. Unsurprisingly, I was the one to flinch at the loud crash, not him.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I’m serious. If you wanna crash at our place, we have one of those fold-out couches. We can worry about getting you home tomorrow. I’m really sorry, Levi.”

“Don’t apologize. Wasn’t your fault,” he shrugged, and I succumbed to the overwhelming urge to give him a hug. He froze up when my arms first wrapped around him, like he’d been jumped by a pair of cables, but slowly relaxed. His rapid, frantic breaths began to slow, and although he didn’t reciprocate with his arms, he rested his chin on my shoulder for a moment. I wasn’t afraid of him that night: I felt bad for him, and felt like shit for putting him through everything I had just witnessed.

“I know, but I shouldn’t have pushed you,” I sighed. “I shoulda just let you walk away.”

“Ya know what you can do for me?” He asked.

“What? Anything,” I said, hoping to get a chance to at least partially redeem myself.

“Stop touching me,” he replied coldly, and my arms, without being told, instantly retracted back to my sides, and I stepped away from him to give him space. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he muttered again, pushing the sidewalk with the toe of his boot before starting towards the car. “I don’t really give a fuck what you do.”

“I-” I started to apologize again, but caught myself. I climbed into the backseat again, sliding to the window once more, but instead of taking the other window seat, Levi sat beside me. “Aunt Iz, can he stay with us tonight? I already said he could.”

“Sure. Any time, hon. Seems like home is pretty turbulent. You’re free to stay with us anytime you need,” Isabel nodded, putting the car into drive again, and speeding off of the godforsaken street and towards home again, where we would sleep within throwing distance of a future serial killer that I had just pissed off.

*Good night, Mama.

** Excuse me for ruining your fucking day.


	10. Chapter 8

We were able to arrive home and set up the couch for him without a hitch, Isabel reminding Levi again that he was always welcome in our home before turning in for the night. I stayed out with Levi for a few minutes more, making sure that he knew where everything was before I, too, retreated to my bedroom, making sure to lock the door behind me. I changed into pyjamas and climbed between the sheets, but sleep wouldn’t come.

The flutterings of anxiety settled into my stomach while I stared at the grooves in the popcorn ceiling, wondering if I would sleep at all. I tossed and turned, flipped my pillow several times, and even tried counting sheep, but sleep avoided me like the plague. Slowly I began to realize that in order to feel comfortable enough to actually get any rest, I would have to check on Levi.

So, under the guise of getting a glass of water, I crept down the stairs and into the kitchen, blinded by the absolute darkness that engulfed my house, and wondering how long I’d been lying in my bed. I checked the clock and saw that it was nearly one in the morning, so I’d been in bed for about an hour with no luck. Pulling a glass from the cupboard, I filled it up with water from the tap and looked into the living room. There I saw Levi, sitting up against the arm of the couch, his eyes open, but not fixed on me. 

“I swear to God, you almost gave me a heart attack,” he snorted, climbing from the couch and slowly making his way to the kitchen. I could hear his bare feet shuffle across the linoleum and stop when he was within comfortable whispering range.

“Did I wake you?” I asked, taking a sip of the water in my glass and looking over to the dark haired boy who stood rigidly about five feet away from me. 

“No,” was his only response. I watched him lean back and prop himself up against the kitchen counter, and was happy to see him relax a little. “Have you slept?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Just grabbing some water. I’ll head back upstairs in a minute. Sorry to bother you.”

“I never said it was a bother,” Levi muttered, his hushed voice portraying undertones of mild frustration.

“Sure, but,” I sighed, cutting myself off as I decided against beating the dead horse. “Never mind.”

“What?” he asked, pushing for my response. 

“Nothing, it wasn’t important,” I shrugged, finishing the rest of my water, and placing the glass on the counter behind me, not moving from my spot. We stood in the silent darkness for several minutes, neither of us speaking a word to each other. We were held up in our standoff, and time had once again lost its meaning to me. I wondered if it was the same way for Levi. I wondered if he knew how it felt to have seconds slow into hours, and minutes into days.

“Eren, I’m going to ask you a question. I need you to answer honestly and to the best of your ability,” Levi said abruptly, immediately piquing my interest. “Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” I nodded, trying to appear casual, in case it was something he’d been nervous about. Alienating him was the last thing I was trying to do, and the casual tone made me feel confident I was avoiding it.

“Have you ever felt like there’s something about you that freaks you out? So you try to avoid it, until it becomes an inescapable problem?” Levi asked, and although I had a pretty good idea of what he was asking about, I had him clarify, just in case.

“What do you mean? What’s going on?” I asked, looking at him, much clearer now that my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. “Why ask me?” I added, putting more emphasis on that question than the others as curiosity got the better of me. 

“Well, I just figured that you’ve already seen my home life on display, so what more do I have to lose with you, right?” he scoffed, fiddling with his thumbs and avoiding my eyes while he spoke. His spine was so stiff that it looked like he had metal rods in his back, keeping him in place. 

“Honestly, it’s okay, Levi. I’m not here to judge you or your family,” I replied. “You don’t have to worry about what I think.”

“Well, what do you think?” he asked, avoiding his previous questions, making me realize that I would have to bring them up again, if I wanted to talk about them.

“I think that you’re justified not wanting people knowing where you live. I don’t think you’re actually living with her, and you don’t need anybody snooping around. I get that,” I nodded, folding my arms and hoping I hadn’t said the wrong thing. “I’m sorry for overstepping tonight.”

“No, you didn’t know. Don’t apologize. You need to quit apologizing about shit that isn’t your fault,” Levi snapped, his quiet voice letting me know that I had frustrated him again. 

“But what about your question? What do you mean, “something that freaks you out”?” I asked, rerouting the conversation back to its initial destination. 

“Well, I don’t know how to be more specific than that without freaking you out, too,” he chuckled, letting a long sigh out from his lungs that shifted into a small coughing fit as he ran out of breath. 

“Try me,” I replied, hoping to get an insight into his mind.

“Eren,” Levi whispered, even quieter than before, but there was a certain power behind his words that commanded immediate attention. He was heart wrenching, shattering every piece of my mind as I tried to fit his together.

“Yeah?” I asked, hanging onto every syllable that spilled from his mouth, dying of curiosity right in front of him. I needed to know what he would say. I needed to know if I was right.

“Don’t resent me, okay? I don’t wanna fuck up what’s going on with you and Petra because you got all butt hurt and don’t wanna see me again,” Levi replied, his voice wavering as he spoke. I could hear his own anxiety reaching a peak, and I watched as his hands trembled in the darkness. “And you can’t tell Petra I told you, because she and I promised that we wouldn’t tell anybody. I’m only telling you because I feel like I’ve got nothing more to lose.”

“Hey, you haven’t lost anything,” I said gently, trying to comfort him a little. “I already told you you don’t have to worry about that. You’re a cool guy, Levi. Some issues at home aren’t gonna scare me off.”

“Why not?” he asked, and I could tell he was trying to make a last ditch effort to change the subject. 

“I mean, I’m the weirdo that lives with his dad’s brother. My parents are dead, Levi. I have no judgement for you,” I answered him honestly. My parents had died in a car accident when I was seventeen, and I didn’t see the use in keeping it from him. I figured that he would be more open to sharing if I put something of my own on the line.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Levi exhaled. I could tell that he was having a hard time scrounging up sympathy, but was clearly making an effort. “That’s shit dice, Eren.”

“But what were you going to tell me?” I asked, hoping to finally get an answer out of him. “I promise I won’t tell Petra you said a word to me.”

“Okay, well,” Levi started, taking a deep breath as he gathered his wits about him. “I couldn’t,” he started, before cutting himself off with another clipped sentence clause. “I didn’t-” he began again, but after freezing up for several seconds, he shook his head and let out a sigh. “Never mind. Forget it.”

“It’s okay,” I whispered, hoping to comfort him a little. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“Okay,” he murmured, staring straight ahead, again unable to look at me while I began to realize that my guess may have been wrong. I wasn’t sure that he was going to talk about any dark, malicious thoughts he’d had about harming another person; I wasn’t sure what he wanted to talk about at all, and again, for several minutes we just stood there, silently waiting for the other to start up the flow of conversation again, but it never came. After a compressed eternity, Levi rose from his spot against the kitchen counter and cast one final glance in my direction before trudging back into the living room. 

“Good night,” I said softly, climbing back up the stairs and to my bedroom, but there was no response. Closing myself into the bedroom once more, I thought to lock the door again, but decided against it for reasons I’d never be able to explain. I fell asleep after another long bout of restlessness, not budging for another several hours.

Upon my waking, I trudged downstairs again to find the fold out couch put away pristinely and a small note scribbled at the bottom of the grocery list on the refrigerator.

_ “Thank you,” _ was all it said and something about the silence downstairs told me that Levi had already left. I gave bathrooms and hallways a brief once-over and finally checked the garage, where I found Farlan leaning over the engine of our car, the hood propped up on a short piece of two by four. He was chatting idly with Isabel while she sat on the toolbox, sipping a glass of iced tea. 

She wore a pair of angled sunglasses with thick white brims and her scarlet tresses were woven into a braid that ended just past her shoulders. The sleeves of Farlan’s shirt were rolled up past his elbow, and the majority of his shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a skin-tight white tank top underneath, his hairline shimmering with a light band of sweat. It was almost like one of those vintage photographs that I had seen before in thrift stores.

“Hey sport, how’s it going?” He asked, standing up at full attention and turning to face me.

“Good,” I yawned, feeling the beginnings of a hot day crawling into the room on the morning breeze through the open garage door. “Where’s Levi?”

“I’m not sure,” Farlan replied with a shrug, shaking his head and mussing his ash-blonde hair with one of his black, greasy hands. “We thought he was with you.”

“Nope. I already looked for him. He left a thank you at the bottom of our grocery list, but I think he’s already left. What are you up to this morning?” I asked while Farlan fiddled with the engine, pulling things out and digging deeper into the machine.

“He’s checking the spark plug,” Isabel hummed, leafing through the morning paper. “Stupid thing didn’t start the first time when I left to get groceries. It’s fine, now, but he still wants to check.”

“Has it had issues like this before?” I asked and Isabel nodded slowly, focused more on the news than on my question. I wondered if Levi would have meddled with it, but if there’d been issues before, then I was doubtful that he would have had anything to do with it.

“Yeah, it was in need of one when she bought it, apparently, not that she’d mentioned it,” Farlan chuckled, pulling out a burnt spark plug from deep within the engine. “Looky here,” he said, pushing up to a full stand and making his way over to me with the retired piece of equipment. “See that black coil?” he explained, running his fingers along the ridges of black, coiled wire. “That means you need a new spark plug.”

“Cool,” I nodded, knowing virtually nothing about cars. I paid mechanics to change my oil, not trusting myself not to commit an act of fatal hubris.

“Yeah,” he nodded, tossing the spark plug into the metal garbage bin, where a high pitched shatter echoed through the garage. “Oops,” he shrugged, while Isabel pulled her sunglasses down her nose, just far enough to give Farlan a reprimanding glare before returning to her paper. Farlan smirked at me, flashing a lopsided, goofy grin in my direction before muttering, “ _ Women _ ,” and shifting his gaze to see if he’d gotten a rise out of Isabel. He had, apparently, as a sandal whizzed past his head and slapped into the wall, clattering to the floor and knocking down a rolled up carpet as it fell.

“I’ll do it, Farlan Church. Do not make me,” she muttered, pushing her sunglasses up to their rightful perch on the bridge of her nose with a single gracefully extended middle finger. She took another sip of her tea from the straw, her eyes focused back on the page.

“What are you reading about that’s so interesting, anyway?” Farlan asked, wiping his hands with a white rag that had long since resigned from being an actual white rag, stained with oil as Farlan folded his arms.

“Stocks,” she replied, clicking her tongue at him and flipping the page. “I forgot that we’re on the tail end of a recession right now.”

“Interesting,” Farlan replied, replacing the offending spark plug and replacing all of the car parts he’d taken out. “Alright, now for the trial run,” he said to himself, tossing the rag to the cement floor and climbing into the driver’s seat. Turning the key in the ignition, he tipped his head back against the headrest while the engine purred to life. “Well, I’m glad that worked,” he laughed, turning it off again and climbing out of the car. 

“Me too,” Isabel said, sending a sarcastic smirk in Farlan’s direction. “Maybe then you won’t have to nag me about it.”

“I wasn’t nagging you, I was  _ reminding  _ you to get a spark plug the next time you went out. There’s a difference,” he chuckled, closing the hood and resting the wooden plank against the wall. As I stood closest to the door that led back into the house, I was first to hear the phone ring, and sprang at the opportunity to answer it. Farlan and Isabel beginning to sound like an actual married couple was a little more than hard to process.

“I got it,” I called over my shoulder, when Isabel began to rise to her feet. Rounding the corner into the kitchen, I picked the phone up from the wall rocker and answered with, “Magnolia-Jeager residence, this is Eren speaking.”

“Hey, Eren,” Petra’s voice hummed on the other line. “It’s me.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding while I checked the clock, reading 12:30 with its hands. “What’s up?”

“Levi wanted me to thank you for your help last night, whatever that means. He told me you’d understand, but I was like, “Levi, that’s kinda vague,” and so-”

“Okay, I understand,” I nodded, a little confused as to how she’d seen Levi. “But when was this? When did you see him?”

“About an hour ago. He showed up at my place and asked for a ride to the library on the south side of town. But that one’s closed on Sunday, so I’m not sure why. He didn’t seem to be in the right state of mind, you know. And I was like, “you’re so stunned, that library is closed today,” but he had me take him anyway. So, I was all, “right on,” and he was like “keep on truckin’” and then he walked away,” she explained in far too many words. 

“Do you know where he could be?” I asked, twirling the telephone cord around one of my fingers while I waited for her response.

“I guess he could be at Oluo’s. Or Marco’s, but I’m not sure if Marco’s back yet. He was outta town,” Petra said inconclusively, exhaling a raspberry in exasperation. “Why? Do you need him? I’m sure we could conduct a witch hunt if you need. Do you want me to come get you? Is he okay?”

“Um, yeah, I think so, I just wanna make sure. He was dealing with a lot last night, and I just wanna make sure he’s not getting into any trouble,” I replied. “If you help me look for him, I’ll buy you dinner when we’re done.”

“Oh yeah, cassanova? Is that a date?” she snorted, utterly freezing me in my tracks. 

I wasn’t sure how to respond and drew out an extended, “Uhh,” while I tried to think of something to say. After a moment longer, Petra began to giggle on the other line.

“Don’t be fruit, man, I’m just yankin’ your chain,” she laughed, muffling the phone somehow so that she was quieter. “Be there in ten?”

“Yeah. That works,” I replied, removing the phone from my ear and preparing to place it on the rocker.

“Mondo, man,” she said, a remarkably visual grin in her voice, so that I could almost see her eyes shut from the smile she spoke with. “I’ll smoke you out, too, if Marco’s back in town. Bye, Eren.”

“Bye,” I said, hanging the phone back up on the rocker and returning to the garage to find Farlan and Isabel tidying up the workspace. 

“Who was that?” Farlan asked, walking past me to get back into the house. I followed him back into the kitchen where he began to wash his hands with dish soap to cut the grease from his skin.

“Oh, just Petra,” I explained, watching his pasty skin reappear from beneath all of the brown suds. “She and I are gonna go look for Levi, so we can make sure he’s okay, and all.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” he mused, thinking for a moment longer while he dried his hands on the dishtowel that hung from the wood panel beneath the sink. “Do you need the car? Iz and I are off work today,” he added as an afterthought while he began to button his shirt up again and readjust his sleeves back down to his wrists.

“No, Petra said she’ll drive,” I responded, heading towards the staircase. “Gotta go change,” I said as I began to climb the steps.

“Oh, no, I think a tee shirt and pyjama bottoms will work just fine,” Farlan called up the stairs behind me while Isabel made her way into the kitchen. I made it to the landing and turned into my bedroom. I threw on a pair of denim jeans that flared out wide from my knees, creating a pool of fabric at my feet and another godsend of a white tee shirt. I ran a comb through my hair and marveled at how quickly my face seemed to be healing. My knuckles still were a little swollen, and heavily scabbed over, having rebroken several times during the healing process due to my need to use my fingers dexterously, but the cuts were finally beginning to dry out around the edges, so I was optimistic that they’d be healed by the end of the week.

Sliding on a pair of leather work boots over my thick woolen socks I heard Isabel call my name from the bottom of the stairs. “Eren, pretty girl’s here askin’ for ya.”

“Okay, thanks,  _ Aunt Iz _ ,” I snapped, to which a loud, crackling laughter was her only response. I quickly made my way down the staircase, taking it two steps at a time so that Isabel wouldn’t say anything else before I got down there.

“Hey,” Petra said, her cheeks a portrait-like rose color, likely from the comments Isabel had made. “You ready?” she asked and I nodded, holding the front door open for her, and letting her out of the house.

“Not too late, now,” Farlan said from the couch, “it’s a school night.”

“Right, right,” I muttered, closing the door a little too loudly behind me as I made my way to the passenger side of Petra’s car. 

“Those your parents?” she asked, pointing a thumb back towards the front door while she unlocked her car.

“No, those are my aunt and uncle,” I replied, climbing in when she fully unlocked the car from the driver’s seat. 

“Oh, right, you said that,” she nodded, starting the engine while I buckled into the right-hand chair. “They seem nice.”

“They are,” I replied, pressing my lips together in a thin line and bunching my hands up at my knees. “So, where to next, boss?” I asked.

“Let’s swing by Marco’s, just to  _ see _ ,” she said slowly, like she was thinking out loud while she backed out of our driveway. I watched the houses on my street roll by at the leisurely pace she was driving. “He lives pretty close to you.”

“Are we cool stopping by uninvited like that?” I asked while she turned onto another side street that led further away from the center of town.

“Yeah, he lives on his own. He graduated last year, and usually we party down at his place, but since he’s been on that road trip with his friends, we haven’t been able to use his spot. He lives there with two other girls that graduated last year also, and they wanted to go up to some end of summer music festival in San Francisco, so they packed up and rolled out about a month ago.”

“Oh, cool,” I replied, wondering who this Marco guy was, and where he fit into the friend group.

“Yeah, they’re all pretty bomb,” Petra nodded, adjusting her yellow and red striped halter top while she drove, turning down another road and pulling up to another small brick house that was within walking distance of the supposed library she’d left Levi at. Using only the side streets, we’d managed to cross town. Upon our arrival, there was a large robin's-egg Volkswagen bus parked in the driveway, with a mural of a long haired woman wearing a flower crown painted on the side. “So he is home! He said he’d call me.”

I only shrugged, not knowing how reliable Marco would have been, as I’d never met him before. She parked behind his bus and we climbed out of the car, making our way to the front door. She knocked on the door and after a moment, we heard a loud crash and a woman’s voice speak from the other side of the thin front door. “Oh, it’s just Petra. She has some dude with her.”

“Let em in,” I heard a masculine voice with a very light South American accent drawl from one of the open windows. The deadbolt unlocked with a loud click and the door creaked open, revealing a half-naked blonde wearing only a patchwork skirt that hung just past her knees. Her long thick mane hung over her shoulders, just barely obscuring her chest, but as soon as the breeze from the outside caught her, everything was on full display, so I quickly averted my eyes. “Peace, man,” she nodded lazily, “c’mon in.”

“Hey guys,” Petra smiled, looking very at home among them, immediately plopping down and getting comfortable on one of their couches.

“Hey man,” Marco smiled, and the first thing I noticed about him was the attractive spattering of freckles grazing his cheekbones. The second thing I noticed was that his chocolate brown hair was longer than the blonde girl’s. He had a golden tan and bright brown eyes that lit up when they focused on something for long enough. “I’m Marco, and this is my pad. Kick your shoes off, get comfy, everybody’s welcome here, man.”

“I’m Eren,” I replied, reaching forward to shake his hand. He took it and nodded slowly.

“Righteous. You’ve got some good vibrations, dude,” he said lazily. “I can tell we’re gonna get along if you keep chillin’ with Petra. Where are you from, anyway?”

“I’m from back East. I moved here with my aunt and uncle,” I said, sitting down on the couch beside Petra while the blonde girl pulled an empty bong from the ground beside the lamp table. 

“Right on, babe,” he nodded. “Mondo, if you will,” he said, taking the bong from the girl that sat beside us and filling it up with more water from the tap in the kitchen. “We spilled the bong accidentally, tryna hide it, cuz we thought you were the fuzz, ya know.”

“Oh jeez, sorry about that,” Petra said bashfully.

“Not a problem, dude,” he grinned, sinking into a bean bag chair and packing the carb full of marijuana. “Krista, why don’t you put on a shirt, love?”

“Huh? Oh! Right,” she nodded, walking briskly and stumbling through a doorway that was only closed off by magenta and orange beaded curtains.

“She’s really wasted right now,” he whispered loudly, lighting the weed and taking an impressive hit from the bong. “Ymir! Come meet Eren! He’s one of Petra’s folks!” he called in the direction of the bedroom making sure to let as little smoke escape from his lungs as possible, and I was surprised at how long he was holding in the rip. “Hope you don’t mind Marley,” he said, pressing play on an old record player and adjusting it to the outside of the black disc, slow reggae pouring from the speakers when he let the needle go.

“Not at all,” I sighed, wondering when Petra was going to ask about Levi. A tall, slender brunette emerged from the bedroom and waved at us while her long, comfortable looking dress swished at her feet. Her arm was wrapped around Krista’s waist as they sat together with Marco on the oversized bean bag chair. 

“Hi,” she smiled, throwing up a two-fingered peace sign, “I’m Ymir, obviously. Nice to meet you.”

“Oh, and sorry about my boobs, it’s just really hot in here, and we need to call the air conditioning company to get it turned back on. Cuz we shut it off while we were gone,” Krista said slowly, her eyelids drooping as she embraced her potent high, her chest now covered by a loose, hand-cropped tank top that looked like it could have been Marco’s at one point.

“Here, get in on this you guys,” Marco said, leaning forward and passing the bong across the living room, to Petra and tossing the lighter in my direction. “Nice catch,” he grinned when I caught it in my palm and passed it to my friend.

“Thanks,” I smiled while Petra lit the bong again, pulling up the smoke to the top of the neck before retracting the carb and breathing in the intoxicating air. She held it for a moment before releasing it in lazy o’s that wobbled as they crossed the stagnant living room, rolling until they finally dispersed among the hazy atmosphere. As soon as I’d stepped in the house, the smell of pot permeated from every direction, and I was sure I was already a little contact-high.

“But, hey, Marco, we came by to ask if you’ve seen Levi,” Petra said, passing the bong to me. I did my due diligence and took a long, slow pull from the long glass vase.

“Ackerman?” he asked slowly, shaking his head. “Nah, haven’t seen him since we got back.”

“Oh, okay. How  _ was  _ your trip, by the way?” Petra asked, leaning back into the chair and bobbing her head in time with the beat of the music. “Gimme the skinny. You guys have fun?”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” Ymir chimed in, tossing her long dark hair over her shoulders and revealing her sun-kissed skin. “Good people, good music, I mean what more could you really want, man?”

“Good food, too,” Krista piped up. “Those guys from India made some bomb curry and shit.”

“Yeah, they were really cool,” Marco agreed. “Righteous dreads on one of the guys. I was blown away, man. They went past his ass. I was like, “how do you keep your head up, man?” and he was like,” Marco paused, feigning a long hit from a joint before rolling his head forward, so that his chin was to his chest before continuing his story, ““I don’t, usually.” Eliciting quiet, dazed laughter from the rest of us, he returned his head to its upright position and kept speaking about the music festival. “And I was astonished, man. Totally tripped out, so I was all, “right on, man!” and we kept eating that awesome curry, and fuckin’ chicken tika. It was beautiful, dudes. You shoulda been there. You’d’a loved it, Petra. Way up your alley. There were all kinds’a cute rocker dudes that woulda been all over you. It was groovy.”

“Sounds like it,” Petra giggled, collapsing onto her elbows, and waving her forearms frivolously, as though she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. 

“Yeah, we really missed you and the guys, Petra,” Krista said with a lazy lopsided grin sweeping her youthful features. “And, y’know, it’s really nice to meet you, Eren.”

“You, too, guys,” I nodded at them, now far too stoned to really formulate anything more than that. Whatever Marco was giving out was potent, because I slumped into the couch.

“Do you, like, want a sandwich, man? The rest of our power’s on, just not the AC,” Marco asked, tossing his thick brown hair over his shoulder and standing from his beanbag to wander to the kitchen. I looked around the home, taking in the pictures on the wall. Large, framed prints of the three of them among trees, beaches, and crowds of people, surrounded by newspaper and magazine clippings of the Grateful Dead, and Strawberry Alarm Clock, and various other articles and pictures were plastered to the wall. The entire wall behind the beanbag was a giant collage of sorts, enclosed by transparent floor to ceiling curtains, and upon my observation the curtain rod was covered with bumper stickers for various national parks and music festivals. I was thoroughly impressed by the thing, and all of the places they must have checked off their bucket list in order to make it.

“Oh, count me in!” Petra exclaimed, sitting upright and raising her hand, leaning into me as she laughed at herself. I felt the warm softness of the high fill my stomach and set me into utter contentment. Everything around me was beautiful, and I was at ease in Marco’s house.

“Ya know,” Marco called from the kitchen, well into the process of making turkey sandwiches for everybody, “If you’re lookin’ for Levi, he might be out by the campgrounds. He and Kenny went there a lot, remember?” he stated, and I wondered what campgrounds they could possibly be referring to. 

“Right, I do remember that,” Petra hummed, and suddenly a shadow cast across her expression, and she was deep in some kind of serious contemplation.

“That Kenny, man,” Marco muttered, seemingly on the brink of some wave of powerful emotion. “I miss that guy,” he sighed. 

“Me too,” Petra nodded, fanning her eyes and looking up, trying to keep from tears.

“That war never should have happened,” Krista sighed while Ymir held a reverent nod in the silence that followed Krista.

“I know it, Krista,” Marco exhaled, and it seemed like Petra wasn’t the only one trying to keep from crying, “Too many good guys, ya know?”

“I know,” Ymir said under her breath, looking down at her feet. “Fuck.” In that moment, I became aware of the trauma an entire generation of young people faced because of Vietnam, and if there was anything that I’d never fully be able to understand, it was that. 

“Fuck is right,” Petra said, exhaling through her nose while Marco came back with the sandwiches, passing a half out to each of us before plopping back down onto the beanbag chair, and lifting the bong.

“To a good guy, taken from us too soon, indeed, mi corazón,” he said, smiling a strained smile at the ginger that sat beside me. “Cheers,” he said reverently, lighting the carb and taking another long pull from the glass pipe. He took the hit and passed to his left, to Ymir, who said a cheers before taking a hit. Petra took a hit, as did I, and finally we passed it back to Krista who nodded in time with the music while she took the final drag.

“Kenny was Levi’s uncle. They lived together until Kenny was drafted,” Petra explained. “He was basically everybody’s dad. He’d take us all out in his truck, and we’d bump down the highway in the back of it, which was especially cool at night, cuz we could see all the stars. When we were older, he’d let us drink at his place, as long as we stayed inside. But, he was always there to listen when you were having a bad day. That’s probably what I remember the best. He’d let you talk for hours, and just listen. He was a cool dude, man.” She said resting her chin in her hands again and looking around the room.

“He sounds like it. Wish I coulda met him,” I nodded, now understanding why everybody seemed so torn up about his passing.

“It was his last tour, too. I was there the day the officers came by. We were out in my front yard and saw ‘em pull into Levi’s driveway. He ran so fast across the street he coulda made the Olympic tryouts. They moved to their new place after that,” Petra said softly. “They’ve only been there a year or so.”

“Jesus,” I exhaled, taken aback by the gut wrenching story Petra told. “I’m so sorry.”

“There was a yellow ribbon in front of his house until a little while ago. When the war ended, his mom took it down,” Petra sighed. “It was such fucking bullshit, man!” she rasped, balling her hands into fists and wiping her eyes with them. “I just don’t get it!”

Feeling like Petra must’ve needed some comfort, I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her so that the side of her body was flush with mine. I didn’t want to say anything for fear of upsetting her more, so I stayed silent, waiting for somebody else to say something.

“Hey, babe, let’s talk about somethin’ else. I hate seein’ you cry, flower,” Marco said, standing up and making his way over to the couch where Petra and I were. “Let’s get all our wiggles out and do some dancing, how ‘bout that? Eat your sandwich, Love, and I’ll put on some better music, okay?”

“Okay,” Petra nodded, and Marco took her hand in his, pressing a kiss to her knuckles and giving it a squeeze before meandering over towards the record player and switching out Bob Marley for The Beatles. “Strawberry Fields Forever,” began to pour from the speakers.

“May I have this dance, m’lady?” I asked, finishing off my sandwich and holding my hand out for Petra to take.

“Only if you don’t mind me eating,” she sniffed, taking a bite of her sandwich and forcing a smile upwards at me.

“Not at all,” I laughed, helping her to her feet and walking her into a swaying two step while the intro played. “Let me take you down, ‘cause I’m going to,” I sang along, knowing full well how terrible my singing voice was, but hoping to get a laugh out of her while Marco and Ymir stood from their seat. “Strawberry fields,” I sang, dragging my open hand across my face and dramatically looking away from her.

“Where nothing is real!” Krista sang out, reaching up while Ymir helped the petite girl to her feet.

“And nothing to get hung about!” Marco nodded along, giggles filling the room at my stupid dancing antics. I wiggled my fingers and dragged my hands lazily through the air, like I was some kind of interpretive dancer. Eventually Petra joined me in the strange dance, swaying side to side and trying to maintain the drama of the dance moves with our facial expressions, but failing every time we burst into stoned fits of giggling. 

“I love you guys,” Petra smiled when the song had ended. “How’d you know I loved that song, Marco?”

“Que pasa?” he asked, as he snapped out of a daze. “Huh? Sorry.”

“I said how’d you know I loved this song?” she asked. “And I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”

“How’d you miss that? He speaks fluent Spanish,” Ymir pointed out, shaking her head at the ginger.

“I wouldn’t say  _ fluent _ ,” Marco shrugged. “But my mom is from Colombia, and she met my dad and moved here when she was twenty, so I guess the rest is history.”

“Oh, no, right,” Petra nodded. “I knew that. Sorry. I forgot.” It was then that I began to realize that maybe Petra had done more drugs than I was aware of.

“How did you forget? We’ve known each other since you moved,” Marco laughed, resting his hand heavily on Petra’s shoulder.

“I dunno, man. Probably your pot,” she snickered, wrapping her arms around his waist and pulling him in for a hug. “Damn, I missed you, Marco.”

“Did’ya miss me or the weed?” Marco asked, swaying back and forth with Petra resting comfortably in his arms.

“Can I say both without getting in trouble?” She asked, her voice muffled by his floral button up shirt.

“You sure can, dude,” he nodded, kissing the top of her head. “I’ll love you the same either way, Ral.”

“Aww, I love you too, Bodt,” she giggled, leaning up and kissing his cheek. We danced for years that afternoon, each of us taking turns dancing with each other until more than three hours had passed. As the sun began to sink in the sky, Petra and I remembered that we were on a manhunt and bid Marco and the girls a good day before setting out to find our missing person.


	11. Chapter 9

After getting on the road again, we decided to continue our search at Ollie and Riko’s houses, not allowing ourselves to get so sidetracked again while at the other’s homes. Neither of them had seen him since Friday, and when we asked Riko, she seemed to wonder why we cared so much either way.

“I mean, why are you guys worried about him all of a sudden? He’s dropped off the map for weeks before, and you didn’t really give a shit,” Riko pointed out, folding her arms while she leaned against her doorway, smacking a piece of chewing gum between her teeth while she spoke. 

“Okay, first of all, I did give a shit, but I wasn’t worried about him, then, because I had no reason to be worried,” Petra retaliated, mirroring Riko’s stance while she addressed her. 

“But why now, then? You literally saw him today,” she exhaled loudly, grabbing a hold of her fleece-like hair and tugging on it in frustration. “And I have cookies in the oven, so I gotta go. Good luck finding him. Lemme know if he’s okay,” she said slowly, and it was then that I caught notice of her pupils blown wide, completely decimating the glittering blue with the textureless black. Her irritability certainly made more sense, given that she was probably high on some kind of upper. “Catch you on the flipside, you guys,” she muttered, shaking her head and closing the door on us.

“That was weird,” I said quietly while we retreated to our car, which Petra had left unlocked. I slid into the passenger seat and waited for her to start the engine.

“Nah, she gets like that sometimes. She can be really hard to get along with when she wants to be,” she replied, turning the key and backing out of the driveway. I felt a twinge of anxiety at the thought that we’d lost him. His trail was cold, and everywhere else we checked turned up no clues. Eventually, as the sun began to sink beneath the horizon, we decided to check the campground.

“Where even is the campground?” I asked, looking out the window as she drove towards the western end of town, almost like we were chasing the daylight as it began to elude us. 

“This way,” Petra replied simply, pointing directly towards the setting sun. We continued down a mildly more populated highway in search of the fabled campground. “Have you been to the mines, yet?” she asked after a moment of brief consideration.

“No,” I said, shaking my head, not having heard of a mine or a campground until just that afternoon.

“Oh, well this area used to be a big oil and mineral spot, and the mines only closed down about thirty years ago. People go there a lot to see what we can find. It’s really scary at night though. People say it’s haunted,” she said with a shudder and a glance to the right side of the road, where I figured the mine lay hidden from every law abiding soul.

“You guys sure have a lot of haunted places around here,” I observed, looking over at her and noticing that she was clearly unsettled by the idea of a haunted mine. 

“Lotta people have died here,” she shrugged nonchalantly, and her simple gesture managed to baffle me. She seemed so desensitized to the idea of death, and I began to wonder why that was. “Not so much anymore, I mean, but in the past,” she said, clarifying before I’d even thought to ask, preening her hair while she drove. “But anyway, we’ll have to show you that place sometime. Technically it’s off limits, but there’s a few holes in the fences. But what I was saying was that the mine is by the campground, or vice versa, I guess. Mine’s been around a lot longer than the campground.”

“Fair enough,” I chuckled, fairly certain that Levi wouldn’t have walked this far out of town, but uncertain as he seemed to be headed out of town the night prior. We drove past a tall wire fence that had several signs that read “Danger! Keep Out!” and “No Trespassing!” as we drove by. I assumed that within that fence would likely be where the mine was enclosed. She continued on the dimming strip of highway for another minute before turning off to a campground called Diez Coronas. 

“Diez Coronas Campground. Ten crowns. It’s named after the bigger city a little further down the road. They have a Sears there, you know,” Petra informed me, with a gentle tap to the breaks so that we wouldn’t exceed the speed limit. We drove through the desultory loops of campsites, keeping our eyes peeled for the dark haired boy we were trying to track down, but he was nowhere to be seen. Shaking her head at the lost cause, Petra turned to me while she pulled into an empty campsite and parked her car. “I’m sorry, Eren. Maybe we woulda found him if I’d had the good sense to leave Marco sooner.”

“Hey, that’s not your fault. Neither one of us was in any place to be driving,” I smiled at her, not upset, but certainly discouraged by our search. “It’s okay, Petra. I’m sure he’s alright.”

“But you sounded pretty worried on the phone. Do you wanna tell me what happened?” Petra asked, looking over to me while the sun set her eyes ablaze, the rich brown in her eyes warmed with hues of yellow and orange in the light of the dying day. 

“Look, I’m not sure what he’s told you, and I’m not even sure I have all the facts straight,” I said, feeling a certain nausea at the idea of having so many unpredicted variables now, and dealing with situations I hadn’t been told to expect, not that I’d necessarily been told to expect anything. “So, I’ll keep it pretty vague, but basically he spent the night at my place, because of a situation that was partially my fault. And I talked with him at around one in the morning, or so, and by the time I woke up, he was gone, and that’s when you called.”

“I see,” Petra mused. “When you say partially your fault, do you mean equally consensual on your part?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow at me, but I was confused by her question. I wasn’t sure how one would even derive that question from the things I had told her. I wondered what she meant by consent, or if we were so far off of the same page that we weren’t even reading the same book.

“What?” I finally asked, narrowing my eyes at her while I continued to contemplate the answer to my own question. What had she meant by that, I thought to myself, but my thoughts were interrupted by a gasp from Petra.

“Oh, you and me are definitely not thinking about the same thing,” she said suddenly. “Disregard everything I just said.” She paused for a moment longer and took in the melding of the desert and the rough mountains at the base of the mountain. “Well, I’m sure we’ll see him tomorrow, and you can talk about it with him then, right?”

“Right,” I nodded, frustrated that we’d hit such a resolute dead-end, but knowing I had to hold up my half of the bargain for making her drive around with me to look for a kid I barely even knew on the basis of something that was so convoluted it made me want to scream. “But, hey, I still owe ya dinner,” I suggested after a moment.

“Indeed you do, Eren,” she giggled, tucking her hair behind her ears, and starting the car again. We drove back into town and rolled into a drive in with several young women on roller skates, attending the cars parked in the vicinity. I bought dinner for the both of us, and we ate in mainly contemplative silence, both of us stumped on Levi’s current location, and ready to give up for the night. After we finished our food, she drove me back to my house with the promise that we’d see each other the next morning. We parted ways for the evening, and I went to bed early, hoping to get some answers when I saw Levi again.

Despite my extra hours of sleep, Monday still seemed to hit me like a train, and I was still half asleep by the time I boarded the school bus headed for the seven hours of boredom and learning things I already knew. 

I met up with Petra on the bus and we walked to our first period together, keeping our eyes peeled for Levi, and just like the week prior, he had already slinked to the back of the classroom and was slumped into the same metal chair as last Monday, his eyes intently focused on the grooves in the wood of his desk. Taking the initiative, I walked up to the boy with Petra following me close behind. 

“Hey, what’s up?” I asked, but Levi simply shrugged. “You kinda disappeared there yesterday,” I said, lowering my voice so that the other zombified students filing into the classroom wouldn’t hear me.

“I did not,” he muttered, not so much as an argumentative tactic, but as a simple statement of fact. 

“Where were you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at his lack of forthright. 

“Does it matter? I’m at school now. Since when do you care?” he scoffed, shaking his head and looking away.

“He cares because I care, Levi,” Petra snapped, leaning over his desk. “You had me drive you to a closed library and then we didn’t see you for the rest of the day.”

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I was at somebody’s house?” he said, and although he should have sounded menacing, his voice was still drenched in monotone.

“Yeah, it did, actually,” Petra retaliated. “Whose house were you at?”

“I was at Ollie’s,” Levi shrugged, and both of us instantly knew he was lying through his teeth. 

“Oh really?” Petra hissed, drumming her fingers on the side of her arm and shaking her head. “Look, class is gonna start, so we’re gonna go back to our seats, but I’ll just leave you with the fact that we went to Oluo’s house yesterday and he said he hadn’t seen you since Friday. I didn’t know you were in the business of lying to me, Levi. Catch ya later,” she sighed, taking me by my wrist and dragging me backwards to the front of the class. We slid into our usual seats, which had been usurped from other people on the first day of school. “I can’t believe him,” she muttered, shaking her head incredulously at nothing in particular.

“Well, could Oluo have covered for him?” I asked while the teacher called the class to attention, but Petra shook her head.

“No, he’s afraid of me. I can spot lies on that boy from a mile away,” Petra whispered, leaning closer to my desk. “That kid wouldn’t lie to me if he was held at gunpoint.”

“I see,” I mused, wondering why Levi would have felt the need to lie about his location the day prior. I wondered what he was hiding, and it concerned me to not know.

The rest of the morning rolled by about as quickly as a steam roller, dragging every second out until I was certain that the clocks in the classrooms were at least an hour slow. Finally, lunch came around and I found Petra who immediately took me on a hunt for Levi before he could leave school.

We found him out in the back, as that seemed to be his routine when he wasn’t cutting class. “Hey, you!” Petra snapped when she laid eyes on him, stomping through the dry grass towards the boy between the air conditioners. “You son of a bitch, where were you?”

“Why does it matter?” He replied, blowing smoke from between his lips and returning Petra’s hard glare.

“Because, you don’t usually lie to me, Levi,” Petra grumbled, sitting down beside him while I quickly followed suit. “I’m not happy, dude.”

“No shit,” he scoffed, shaking his head and rolling his eyes at the redhead that was berating him.

“But why do you have to hide shit with me, Levi? Are you serious?” Petra barked, shooting daggers into our friend. “I don’t even care where you were, I just wanna know why you aren’t telling me. Of all people, why hide things from me? I try to be your friend, and everything that you tell me stays between us. You know that!” She would have kept talking, but Levi held up a hand to silence her.

“Look, you don’t need to know everything about my life, and I don’t need to know everything about yours, alright?” Levi interjected, in the least frustrated voice I’d ever heard. He wasn’t frustrated, he genuinely didn’t care, and that was what sent chills down my spine. “And what the fuck is he doing here? If you have an issue, you don’t need to bring an audience.”

“He’s here because you made him worried too,” Petra bit back at him, jabbing his chest with her finger in the same irate manner his mother had the night prior, and as soon as her finger made contact with his chest, his hand flew to her wrist, and I finally saw a foreign emotion briefly sweep his features. His eyes widened and his mouth briefly fell agape, almost in fear, which made perfect sense to me.

“Don’t touch me,” he said calmly, gingerly replacing her wrist at her side and rearranging his expression into the brick wall it normally was. “And why the fuck would he be worried?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know! Why don’t you ask  _ him _ ?!” she groaned loudly, tipping her head back in frustration against the brick foundation of the school.

“Fine. Eren. Why the fuck were you worried about me?” Levi asked, fixing his gaze intently on my eyes. “You saw me all day yesterday.”

“I- you just left really suddenly, and when I woke up, you were already gone,” I replied as adequately as I could, given that I was put completely on the spot. “And with everything that happened, I just- I dunno. I got worried, okay? I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize to him, Eren,” Petra snapped, and suddenly I felt like a child stuck between two warring parents.

“Uh, I think I am the one that gets to decide whether or not he apologizes to me, Petra,” Levi said rather drolly for the circumstance. 

“And?” she replied, raising an eyebrow, waiting for his verdict on my blown-up apology.

“Don’t apologize to me, Eren,” Levi muttered, crushing his cigarette butt beneath his heel.

“Why not?” I finally worked the nerve up to ask.

“Because I don’t want you to. I don’t deserve an apology from you. Ever,” he replied harshly, shaking his head. “Now, go away. Petra, you stay, I need to tell you something, and I can’t have prying ears listening to all my deepest secrets and regrets,” he snorted in half-humor, like there was a part of him that wasn’t kidding, but shot a wink at me nonetheless. Despite my best efforts, I could feel heat creep into my face and make me more than a little excited to stand up and walk away.

“Okay, see you around,” I sighed, getting to my feet again and walking towards the cafeteria, wondering if I’d still be allowed to sit with Oluo and Riko without Petra. Much to my appreciation, I was, and continued the rest of my lunch hour listening to sex jokes and party planning. Apparently Krista had a birthday coming up, and they wanted to throw a surprise party for her. According to them, Marco was already in on it, and so was Ymir, and now all they needed was Petra and Levi before the party would be complete. They also briefly touched on Homecoming, deciding it was something they would be more inclined to talk about in the presence of the other half of our circle.

Once lunch hour had passed, I was back to the grinding monotony of classes, and I came to the realization that I much preferred Levi’s monotony to the drab classes, teaching me things I thought I had left behind six years prior.

Finally, once school let out, I began a frantic search for Petra so that I could talk to her before she left for the day. I found her at the front of the school, the heat of the afternoon radiating off of everything once we left the climate controlled building. “Hey, Petra!” I called and I saw her hair whip around in the crowds of happy students, thrilled that the day was finally over. Her eyes locked onto me after another moment and she swam against the currents of evacuating teenagers to catch up with me again.

“Yeah? What’s up?” she asked, looking up at me with her wide, doe eyes and batting her long dark eyelashes at me while she waited for me to speak.

“What did you guys talk about during lunch?” I asked, cutting immediately to the chase so she wouldn’t miss her bus.

“Look, I try not to talk about people when it isn’t my place, so if you wanna know, you should go talk to Levi. He’s here an extra hour today. All the shop kids are. So, I mean, shop’s that way,” she said, pointing towards a large garage attached to the school that seemed to have its doors rolled up, revealing several bikes and automobiles lining the inside. “But I gotta go, they’re gonna leave without me. Catch ya later, man!” she said, giving me a quick hug and rushing to get onto her bus. I lived close enough to the school that I could walk home, but I wondered why Petra didn’t just drive if she had a car.

“Later!” I called after her and decided against talking to Levi just yet. He wasn’t ready to open up, I reasoned with myself as I walked home that day, deciding against sitting on a noisy bus full of rowdy teenagers. While I walked, I became increasingly aware that I was ignoring the fact that it wasn’t just Levi that was uncomfortable with the conversation we had to have. I was uncomfortable, too, but I wasn’t sure what the source of my discomfort was. Upon intense self reflection that evening, I came to the conclusion that I felt guilty for prying into his personal life as a way to get my job done, and went to sleep that night wondering how I could try to manage that guilt.


	12. Chapter 10

The next few days of the school week were a rushed blur, and soon I couldn't get the word Homecoming out of my mind. It was only a week away, and it was everywhere I looked. Banners were plastered in the hallways, and different girls were all pandering for the other student's votes for Homecoming queen. The crew had decided to go as a group, so that we could carpool, and Marco said that he would drive us in his van exchange for his admission. The catch was that he had to be somebody's date, since he had already graduated, and so Petra stepped up to the plate and asked him to the dance. Krista and Ymir had no apparent interest in going to the dance, so they would stay back at home and set up the afterparty while they waited for us to come back from the Homecoming activities.

At the end of the week, however, Isabel, Farlan, and I were growing increasingly nervous as we hadn't heard from Hanji yet, and by the time the next Sunday rolled around, we were in a full blown state of panic. Isabel and I were in hysterics, wondering if we were stuck in the seventies, having to live through an entirely different era all over again, but at different ages, while Farlan tried to assure us that maybe Hanji had missed a day. We wouldn't know until another twelve days had passed, and there was no use in getting worked up until we knew for certain that something was wrong. I certainly had developed an appreciation for Farlan's easygoing level headedness while he talked us down, reminding us that we'd been back in time for more than a month and there hadn't been a hiccup yet.

While I laid in bed that night, I decided to throw myself into my work, so that I would have a lot to report to Hanji by the time we heard from her again. I came to the resolution that Monday at school that I would finally work up the nerve to talk to Levi about the night time conversation that was now more than a week behind us. I waited until the end of the day and headed towards the open garage on the edge of the campus. Despite it being nearly October, it was still sweltering during the day. I could feel the hot asphalt singeing me through the soles of my shoes, but other than quickening my pace, that specific predicament didn't have much of a remedy. I finally stepped into the shop, which was about fifteen degrees hotter than it had been outside, and suddenly I realized why they had the doors open. There were large fans placed just outside of each station, but other than that there was no cooling system attached to it. As soon as I stepped inside, I was hit with the smell of motor oil mixed with the sweat of every person inside. Scanning the area, I found Levi in the corner, his back to me while he screwed a bolt into an old Harley Davidson with a small monkey wrench. He had removed his shirt, just as many of the other boys in there had. It was too hot in there to keep anything on that wasn't absolutely vital. As I approached him I slid onto his work bench, crossing my legs and waiting for him to turn around.

While I loitered around his workplace, I watched him working, with laser-like focus on the engine of the bike. It was raised up on a jack so that everything was at eye level to him while he pushed on the handle of the wrench until he was satisfied that the bolt was tightened. Not stopping to turn around and grab another bolt, he pulled one from his pocket and I decided that I would give him a few more seconds before I got his attention. During that time, I couldn't help but notice the slick perspiration that drenched his neck and shoulders, his hairline absolutely soaked as well. I could hear quiet grunts of exertion escape his lips while he worked, and I watched the muscles in his back flex and contract while he wound the second bolt into place with the wrench. Finally, when he produced a third bolt from his pocket, I decided that I would say something, as it didn't look like he was going to look behind him anytime soon.

"Well, hello there," I said sarcastically, snorting at myself while I clasped my interlaced hands over my knee.

"Jesus Christ!" Levi snapped, flinching and dropping the wrench on his foot. "Fuck!" he snapped, whipping around to see who had startled him, but relaxing his tensed muscles when he saw that it was me, but after seeing him drop the wrench on his foot, I wasn't of much assistance as I had been laughing since it had happened. "You really need to stop that."

"Stop what?" I chortled, leaning forward and dropping from his workbench, patting him on the shoulder as an attempt to brace my fall.

"Whatever that was. Scaring the shit out of me when I'm not expecting it. It's frustrating, and weird," Levi grumbled, picking up his wrench and turning back to work on his project.

"Maybe _you're_ the weird one for being so jumpy," I quipped, but he paid no mind to my snark and simply shook his head at me.

"What are you doing here, anyway? You're not in shop," he grumbled. "But hey, while you're here, why don't you pass me another 7/16th by twenty? Make your happy ass useful."

"Well, to answer your question," I replied, rifling through his toolbox in search of the bolt he wanted, "I wanted to talk to you, and Petra directed me this way."

"That bitch," he muttered under his breath. "Alright, well what do you want?" he asked, turning away from his project and waiting for me to find the right head bolt. "Never mind, step outta the way," he snapped, pushing past me and almost instantaneously retrieving the correct bolt for his project.

"I'm sorry, I don't know anything about mechanics," I replied quietly, sitting atop his clear workbench again and swinging my legs to pass the time, careful not to touch his shirt that rested in a wad beside me.

"Clearly," he exhaled. "So what do you want?" He asked, not looking in my direction until the screw was fully tightened.

"Is it illegal to just wanna spend time with you?" I asked, throwing my initial intentions out the window in the blink of an eye, genuinely just looking forward to spending time with him, and getting to know him better.

"No," he shrugged, turning around and reaching for his empty bottle of Coke that looked like it had been repurposed into a water bottle. "Damn," he muttered, turning back towards his project. "Dunno why you would willingly sit in a fucking sweatshop with me, though."

"Do you want me to get you another drink? There's a gas stati-" I started to say, but he cut me off with an abrupt no that came out like a hiss from between his teeth. "Okay then," I sighed, suddenly intent on buying myself a drink to get me through the hour. "Well, I'm gonna run over there real quick, anyway, so now's your chance."

"Whatever, go ahead," he said, jutting his chin in the direction of the open garage doors. I quickly excused myself and jogged down the sidewalk towards the gas station, running into the convenience store, and grabbing a cold drink for the both of us, before paying and heading back towards the million-degree garage, returning after an uneventful trip. I set my drink on the workbench and walked up behind Levi, who was too focused on his bike to catch me in time before I pressed the cold glass bottle to the back of his neck.

"Pay attention," I giggled, when he gasped and shot a glare at me over his shoulder. I lowered his drink and was about to hand it to him when he reached behind himself and brought my hand back to his neck.

"Turns out you aren't entirely useless. You just found yourself a new job, brat," he scoffed, shaking his head while I held the cold soda to his neck. "Keep it right there. I'll be with you in a minute. You're my personal air conditioning unit for the time being."

"Fair enough," I snorted at him, oddly comfortable being so close to him. It was moments like those that I had to remind myself that without my intervention, he would become a cold blooded killer, because in that moment he seemed like somebody I would have wanted to befriend in my youth. "So what kinda bike is this?"

"'52 Harley," he replied. "It used to be my uncle's, and we were gonna fix it up together, but," he trailed off, lost in thought for a moment while his wrench froze in place. "I guess we never got around to it," he said after a while, bringing his tool to life again while he finished screwing the bolt into place.

"I see," I nodded, making sure to keep my arm still enough that I wouldn't move the bottle from its place.

"Can you put it here?" he asked, pointing with one of his blackened hands to the side of his pallid throat. Wordlessly, I stepped closer behind him and moved the bottle to its new place. "Just a second, I gotta lower this. I can't get it all the way up here," he instructed, and I stepped away again, retracting the cool drink from his neck. He lowered the jack and crouched over the bike, loosening the bolts on a larger component of the engine. "You can put the drink back, now," he said, motioning again to the side of his neck.

I did as I was told while he got back to work, and I was now leaning over him in a position I wouldn't be able to maintain for long. Not wanting to jostle his project, I rested my other hand on his shoulder and used his sturdy frame as a way to partially support my weight while I held the soft drink to his neck again. It was a bit of a compromising situation, but I didn't mind either way, simply taking in my surroundings and trying to keep my eyes off of his naked top half.

He removed a large pipe from the engine and fumbled around for a replacement pipe that was just out of his reach. I leaned over him and extended my arm, grabbing the pipe he was reaching for and handing it to him. He muttered a quiet utterance of gratitude before getting back to work, and before long the hour had passed and the students began to file out of the garage while Levi wiped himself down with his balled up shirt, blotting his saturated skin and letting out a sigh while he finally took a sip of his drink.

"Thanks," he said, and despite that being the only thing he said, there were countless unspoken things swimming around in his eyes.

"No problem," I shrugged. "I'll come again tomorrow, if you want."

"If you bring me another cold thing and hold it to my neck the whole time, you've got yourself a deal," he smirked, pulling his shirt over his head and tucking it back into his trousers.

"So, where are we headed now?" I asked while we evacuated the sauna of a garage and immediately were met with first inklings of cool relief from the coming evening.

I could practically see the gears turning behind his eyes while he mulled my question over, dragging a white hand over his ruddy cheek before he voiced a response. "Are you up for a bit of a walk?" he asked after a long moment of considering my question.

"Sure," I nodded, and with that we began walking towards the south end of town. "Can we stop by my house real quick so my aunt and uncle don't worry? They like to know where I am and who I'm with and whatnot," I said after a moment before we'd had the chance to walk past the street my house was on.

"Of course," he replied quietly while we walked along the hot, cracked sidewalk together. In the distance, I could see billowing dark clouds, foreboding in the way that they glared down at our little valley.

We turned onto my street and I walked into my house, dropping off my backpack and writing a quick note to Farlan and Isabel, informing them that I would be with Levi, and that I wasn't sure when I would be back, joking that I'd certainly be back in time for school tomorrow, before turning and walking back out the front door. He led me further south down the main street of the town before he finally spoke again. "Look, I know that you know I'm not living at home at this point, and that's the only reason I'm taking you where I'm about to take you. The jig is kinda up in terms of hiding shit like this from you. Petra doesn't even know, so if I hear from anybody that they know, you're a dead man walking, you catch my drift?"

"Understood," I said softly while I watched cars drive past us. "I promise I won't say a word," I said, already feeling guilty for my obligation to Farlan and Isabel, and to Hanji by association.

"I already don't like how quickly I've had to trust you with some shit, so I'm only adding to your cannon fodder if you decide to screw me over, New Kid. Don't screw me over," Levi said sternly, stopping at the edge of town and turning to me once more. "You're sure you want me to take you with me? It's another couple mile walk."

"I mean, it isn't like I had any other plans," I shrugged, trying to pull off the same nonchalance as him, but weakly disguising my intrigue, I realized when he started chuckling.

"You're just here for _all_ the juicy gossip, aren't ya, New Kid?" he scoffed, shrugging and taking the first step off of the end of the sidewalk and onto the dirt beside the highway.

"I thought I had a name," I replied jokingly, pushing his shoulder while he adjusted his backpack. I wondered how he possibly managed to carry a twenty-five pound bag through the desert for two miles.

"I'm sorry, _Eren_ ," he said sarcastically, rolling his eyes while we walked out of town. "But riddle me this, why are you so interested in what I do?"

"I-" I started to say, feeling anxiety pool in my stomach, but suddenly I started talking without even fully comprehending what I was saying until it was out of my mouth. "You're an enigma. And I haven't figured you out yet."

"So, then, when you have me all figured out, are you gonna leave? Find somebody new to investigate?" He asked, looking over at me and using his hand to shade his eyes from the glaring sun.

"Only if you want me to," I shrugged, feeling my heart thrum like a piano being played in quarter-time staccato. I wasn't sure where that had come from, but my lips weren't exactly attached to my brain at that time. I instinctively blamed the heat for making me delirious, but I was certain that my strange ideas were coming from somewhere other than the heat of the day.

"Say I didn't want you to," he mused, speaking in hypotheticals while the town slowly disappeared behind us, lost in the burning mirage of the afternoon sun.

"Well, then I wouldn't. But I'd certainly want to know why," I replied, continuing with his hypotheticals while he led me further into the arid nothingness. Save a few Joshua trees and small shrubs and cacti, there was nothing.

"And I'd tell you that there was something different about you that _I_ hadn't figured out yet, and would want your company regardless of any mutual mysteries we intended on solving in each other."

"Good answer," I laughed looking around at the stark landscape, and tuning into the buzzing that that kind of heat tended to carry with it. "Why aren't we walking in the emergency lane?" I asked after a moment.

"Do you feel like boiling alive? That asphalt's about a million degrees," he replied bluntly. "We'd cook before we even hit the halfway mark."

"Speaking of, how much farther, do you think?" I asked, a little worried about how far out of town we were walking.

"Eh, we're about halfway," he shrugged. "Why? You wanna turn around?" he added with a sort.

"No!" I said, a little too passionately. "I was just curious. Do you walk this every day?"

"Multiple times," he said, resigning a part of himself in that statement. It certainly explained why he was in such good shape.

"Wow!" I exclaimed, shocked by his answer. "How do you pass the time doing all that walking?"

"I look around. Like you're doing right now," he said, without even lifting his head to look at me.

"At what?" I asked, curious to know what kind of things caught his fancy.

"Everything. The desert is so beautiful. I don't see myself living anywhere else, honestly," he said wistfully. "But I'd trade just about anything for some air conditioning during the summer," he added as an aside after another lull in conversation.

"I bet," I nodded, sure that some place that far out wouldn't get access to any kind of climate control.

"Especially because I basically live in a metal box. It's in the shade, but still," he sighed, and I wondered how he had managed to construct a metal box. It all became clear when he led me off the highway and down into what seemed to be an abandoned train yard. Most of the tracks had been yanked from the ground, but there were still some remnants of the ghost yard. There rested one tank car, at the end of one of the dilapidated tracks, and a boxcar that was liberated of its wheels and rested just to the side of the tracks, beneath a large, out of place willow tree. I wondered how that willow survived the decimating climate but brushed it off while he led me closer to the box car. "So, this is it. We're here," he said, and almost as if the universe was rewarding us for our efforts, the beginnings of one of the dark clouds blocked out the sun, and I could hear thunder ripple through it as it moved. I looked to where I had seen the clouds earlier and saw that now they covered nearly the entire sky.

"This your place?" I asked, looking around and taking in every detail as he nodded at me. He had a fire pit just outside of the sliding car door, and upon closer observation, I saw that there were tiny bones amidst the ash and charcoal. "What are the bones from?" I asked, curious, and a little afraid of what the answer may be.

"I've been attempting taxidermy," he replied coldly, but that didn't explain the bones.

"But where are the bones from?" I asked again, hoping that he would clarify for me.

"I said attempting. I didn't say succeeding," he muttered, seemingly bored by the conversation topic.

"Why taxidermy?" I asked, more than a little unsettled by his revelation, but trying my best to remain neutral about the subject.

"I mean why not? It's something to do, and I'm curious," he replied, sitting on a rock by the fire pit. "I burn my failures so they don't start to smell."

"I see. What are you curious about?" I asked, sitting down next to him, enjoying the shady coverage provided by the desert willow.

"I dunno, it's just interesting to look at, I guess. I like to see how they work inside," he replied casually, pulling his fingers through his hair.

I took a moment to process his reply before I vocalized another question. "You're not, ah, _killing_ the animals to, erm, observe them, are you?" I asked before Levi turned and bunched his expression into a wide-eyed, furrowed-eyebrow kind of scowl that made me question my own sanity.

"Of course not!" he snapped, slapping his hands to his knees, standing up again and pacing the distance between the rock where he'd been sitting and the fire pit. "Why would I kill an animal? That's such a waste of life."

"I'm sorry," I said, drooping my head, feeling guilty for asking. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Don't apologize," he muttered, shaking his head while he stepped out of the circle and began to walk towards the box car. "It was a valid question, I guess."

"Wait, hey," I said standing up and catching his arm before he reached the opening into the box car. He spun around and I realized that if I had taken even half a step more, our bodies would have collided. As it were, we were maybe an inch apart, both of us temporarily too stunned to do anything but stare at each other, each of us simultaneously stepping off of an unidentified precipice. Finally, I found it in me to say something, but my voice sounded like it was completely underwater. "I- I was just gonna say thanks."

"For what?" Levi asked, remaining where he stood, not stepping backwards once good sense had returned to him.

"For bringing me here, and talking to me," I responded weakly, finally releasing his arm.

"Thanks for coming, I guess," he murmured, and I could feel butterflies batting between us, churning up a certain nervousness in my stomach that I hadn't felt in a long time. We were like binary stars, the closer we got to each other, the stronger our gravity became. In that moment, I wondered what would happen if our two stars ever collided. Certainly the entire solar system would be obliterated, and we'd be nothing more than space dust, drifting off into the dark matter for the rest of time. It was then that I was snapped back into reality when a drop of water fell onto my cheek. I looked up and felt another drop hit my nose.

Soon, in exponentially growing quantities, more rain began to fall, and I jumped when I heard the thunder again. In a matter of minutes, it had gone from another painfully hot day with a glaring sun that threatened heatstroke every chance it got, to a total torrential downpour. It was practically biblical, how quickly it rolled in and drenched everything in sight. I felt like a bucket of water had been poured on my head by the time Levi reached for my hand and dragged me into the box car.

Once inside, I managed to slip on the sheet metal floor, despite the grooves that should have kept me in place, and accidentally pulled Levi down with me. We made a loud crash when we hit the floor, almost like a gun had gone off in the vicinity and he knocked the air out of my lungs when he landed on top of me.

"What the fuck?" I gasped, laughing with no air, as I tried to get my lungs to resupply it. I was amused, but it didn't seem like Levi thought it was as funny as I did.

"Are you alright?" Levi asked, climbing off of me and sitting beside me, clearing my wet hair from my forehead and holding up three fingers about a foot from my face. "How many fingers am I holding up?" he asked with his other hand behind his back.

"Three," I replied slowly, finally able to breathe again. He shook his head, and began to wonder how I had possibly gotten that wrong.

"Wrong," he snorted, removing his other hand from behind his back which held up his index and middle finger. "Five, bitch."

"Touche," I laughed, not quite ready to move yet while I stared up at the rusty roof of the ancient train car.

"Alright, well just to make sure you didn't hit your head or anything, I'm gonna have you follow my finger," Levi replied, now holding just his index finger up and slowly gliding it from one side of my line of sight, to the other, watching my eyes as they followed it across my face. His finger centered on my nose and then moved further from my face before he brought it at a measured speed closer again, until the tip of his finger rested on my nose. "You're probably okay," he said, pulling his finger away from me and helping me sit up. "That was quite a spill, man," he scoffed. "But anyway, this is my place."

I looked deeper into the box car and saw a mattress pushed up into the corner of the room, an old quilt neatly tucked in on top of it. He had an apple crate that seemed to act as a sort of nightstand that held an ashtray and a green citronella candle, as I deduced from the teardrop shape of the glass that held it and the hexagonal netting that engulfed it. At the foot of his bed was a stack of neatly folded clothing, and I noticed that despite being in the middle of the desert, the inside of that boxcar had not one speck of dust anywhere in sight. I also noticed that he had a curtain rod that held a set of hand stitched denim curtains that covered an oddly meticulous looking rectangular hole just above his bed.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing towards the hole with the curtains.

"Window. I jacked a blow torch from the shop to make that. Don't worry, I brought it back," he explained, the slightest hint of humor in his voice that made it difficult for me to breathe.

"Nice," I nodded, criss-crossing my legs and leaning up against the uneven wall of the train car. "It's a nice place. Seems quiet."

"It is," he agreed before adding, "unless it's raining," with a quiet chuckle while he pointed up towards the ceiling. The thrumming of the pounding rain made a continuous static sound, that was far more relaxing than I realized, letting out a yawn as my ears tuned into it more finely.

"I like the rain," I said, tipping my head against the wall and listening to it.

"I do, too," he replied quietly before adding, "unfortunately that means that I can't make dinner."

"Why not?" I asked, and then before he could even respond, I realized that the fire pit was likely completely soaked at that point. "Oh."

"Yeah. It's alright. I had a big breakfast," he sighed, "but are you gonna be alright? I'm sure I have a granola bar or something if you get hungry."

"No, I'm fine," I said, also having eaten a large breakfast, but wondering how many nutrients he had actually gotten that morning. "But if you ever let me come back here, I'll bring you an ice chest, so you can have more of a variety."

"You don't have to do that. I'm fine. I don't need charity, Eren. I already told you, I do just fine on my own," he said while the room temporarily lit up with a nearby lightning strike, followed quickly by a loud, booming crack of thunder. "So here's the deal," Levi said suddenly, managing to change the subject before I even comprehended that he'd spoken. "Odds are, the path outta this place is gonna be really muddy, and I don't want you walking home during a lightning storm, all out in the open for two miles, so I say we wait out this storm before I walk you back home."

"You don't have to walk me. I'm perfectly capable of walking myself," I replied in half-truth. I was totally able to walk back on my own, but a part of me was giddy at the idea of spending more uninterrupted time with the intriguing boy that sat beside me, so I decided to clarify. "I don't want you making unnecessary trips back and forth if I can help it."

"Doesn't change the fact that I'd rather not have you struck by lightning."

"But aren't we less safe in this boxcar? I mean, we're in a metal box, next to a tree," I reasoned with him.

"Fair enough, but if it strikes, it won't hit the boxcar, it'll hit the tree, because the boxcar is flat on the top. Doesn't mean we won't be injured, but hey, I mean our chances of survival are higher, and we'll be fine. I've sat through thunderstorms in here before. Haven't been struck by lightning yet."

"Alright, I'll take your word for it. So, Mr. Ackerman, how do you spend your time while you're here?" I asked.

"I usually read, clean, listen to music, and cut up the occasional dead animal," he laughed, like that was funny, but I knew I had to make him feel like he trusted me, so I managed a fairly convincing laugh, too.

"Do you wanna be a mortician, or something?" I asked, hoping that he would allow me to direct him to the legal way to cut up dead things.

"I haven't ever really thought about it," he replied, looking off into space while he answered my question. "But I guess that'd be a good idea. Then I'd get to look at people, too. Figure out how they died. It's all pretty cool when you think about it."

"That's true, and they'd give you fresh stuff, and it'd all be sterile, so you're not picking roadkill off the side of the road. You should try and get into med school," I replied.

"Oh, I'm not even close to being smart enough for medical school, you gotta be joshin' me," Levi muttered, shaking his head at the thought of it.

"Sure you are!" I argued, really trying to stick the idea into his mind, that looking at dead bodies as a career didn't have to be illegal, and he'd get paid for it. I'd much rather have him be a mortician than a murderer. "I think you'd do great."

"You do?" he asked, finally looking in my direction and I nodded at him, genuinely confident that he would excel in a medical field if he could produce the self control to not get carried away.

"Definitely, man," I smiled, turning to look at him as well, content that I'd planted the seed. "Just work really hard to get your Associate's and Bachelor's, and you'll get in easy peasy."

"That's pretty ace of you to say that, Eren," Levi murmured, his voice mostly overpowered by the loud thrumming of the rainstorm blowing in through the doors of the boxcar.

"Well, I meant it, Levi," I responded, scooting closer to him, grateful that the weather had taken such a sharp turn, and I was no longer overheating as my wet clothes quickly worked to cool me off.

"Thanks," he murmured, leaning away from me to reach for a small FM radio and tuning the dial until a commercial played that seemed like it was almost over. The commercial ended, and the radio announcer began to speak again.

 _"Up next, folks, we have a song with a message attached to it. Caller Bette would like to tell Jerry that she still loves you, Jerry, so if you're listening to this, maybe give her a call, cuz this song's for you. Now, "Lady Grinning Soul," by David Bowie,"_ he said while a dramatic piano tune began to play from the speaker, crackling as it sat in the metal box, but we could hear it nonetheless.

"Do you know this song?" Levi asked, looking over at me while I listened, but I shook my head. I had never heard that song in my life.

"Nope," I said to him, wondering if I was crossing any lines by not knowing that song.

"It's a good one," he nodded to himself, closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the wall of the traincar just as I'd done a few minutes prior. He looked so picturesque just resting there that I felt like even breathing too hard would ruin the moment by blowing away the mysticism of the evening on the breeze of a gentle breath.

"It sounds like it," I replied, my gaze unashamedly fixed on his profile and the soft part of his lips. "Why did you bring me here?" I asked after a long pause in speaking, just listening to the hypnotizing music and taking in the boy that sat beside me.

"I dunno," he murmured, his voice hushed and gentle, lapping over me like quiet waves while I listened to him speak, feeling my heart rattle when he looked at me again. "But, look, Eren, there's something I have to do before I lose my nerve."

"What's that?" I asked, and without responding, he hesitantly reached up, and ever so lightly brushed his fingertips across my cheek. I held completely still, waiting to see where this would go and while he took a second to gather his wits about him, I tuned my ears into the sound of the music again.

 _She'll come; she'll go_ , the musician sang and I watched Levi take a deep breath before very slowly drawing me closer to him by my jaw and pressing his lips to mine. I could have pulled away then, but I didn't. Instead, I closed my eyes and let him kiss me, something I never would have dreamed of doing in a million years. I was kissing a boy, and it felt like that was what I should have been doing all along. I realized when he pulled away, that I had been right, our collision had completely decimated the solar system and everything living within it.

We could only stare at each other, both of us so entirely shell shocked by what had just happened that it seemed only natural to reciprocate when he leaned in again. I moved my hands up the sides of his neck, and allowed my fingers to trace the tips of the wing tattooed into it. I wasn't thinking about anything but the feeling of his lips on mine. I shut down my brain and completely glossed over the fact that I was breaking my contract, despite the gut reaction of immediate guilt beginning to settle into the pit of my stomach. He pulled away for the second time, but I was certain that I would have been content to keep going if he hadn't pulled back.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, immediately looking away, not willing to meet my eyes. "I think it would be best if we didn't talk about this. Ever. To anybody."

"Hey, no, it's okay," I blurted out, hoping to keep him from worrying too much. "I liked it," I said without thinking. I had liked it, but I shouldn't have been encouraging him.

"Well, I've actually got some homework I should do while it's still daylight," Levi muttered, looking away and rifling through his backpack for his textbook and notebook paper, while I sat in a daze, wondering what the fuck I'd just done.


	13. Chapter 11

There wasn’t a poet in the world that would have ever been able to describe how I felt that evening, sitting completely silently while Levi did his homework, something that I didn’t suspect he did often. He would briefly glance up at me ever so often, and open his mouth, almost like he would say something, but every time, the words seemed to escape him and leave him with nothing to tell me. I could still feel the adrenaline in my system, and I wondered how I wasn’t keeling over from heart failure at that point, but I could also feel a strong sense of guilty failure gnawing at my insides. I had betrayed everybody at the drop of a hat. I didn’t know what to do, so I brought my knees to my chest and listened to the rain while I waited for a solution, wishing I could take myself back to an hour ago and slap myself in the face. 

“I’m sorry,” Levi said, closing his textbook and slipping it back into his backpack. “That was a bad idea.”

“No, no,” I started to say, but shook my head, needing to be clear that that couldn’t ever happen again. “Look. I’m not gonna tell you that it was a bad idea, because I do think that we’ve learned a thing or two about ourselves, if you also feel like you’re about to pass out. If not, then it was just me.”

“It wasn’t just you,” Levi said quietly, shaking his head and pulling a cigarette from behind his ear, checking to see if it was wet before lighting it and taking a drag. “I know exactly what you’re talking about. I wish we could,” he trailed off and shook his head, knowing better than to go down that path again.

It took every ounce of strength in every fibre of my being not to indulge him, but I reluctantly held my ground. “Me too,” I whispered, before continuing to backtrack. “It wasn’t a bad idea, but I really don’t think it’s right for us to be doing this kind of thing.”

“You’re right,” he said, trying to give himself the confidence to say something like that. “I think it’d be best if this didn’t happen again.”

“Right,” I nodded, forcing myself to agree, still straining against my dying willpower. “I- yeah.”

“I shouldn’t have-” he started to say, but cut himself off with a sharp exhale.

“Don’t say that. We’ll figure this out, Levi. Okay? But it has to stay between us,” I replied, watching him make his way over to his bed and gingerly sit down. I wanted nothing more than to feel like I could tell Isabel and Farlan what had happened, but there was no way I could have explained a situation like that. I was convinced that if I could get that to be an isolated incident, I wouldn’t have to tell anybody, but that didn’t help the fact that I had kissed a future serial killer,  _ and liked it _ . Not to mention the fact that I felt like a total pedophile. I felt gross, and guilty, but so unequivocally attracted to him I could hardly stand it. It seemed like the two warring sides of me should have caused me to spontaneously combust. That certainly would have beat the world of hurt I’d be in if anybody else would have found out.

“No shit,” he muttered. “Don’t tell Petra. Don’t tell anybody,” he instructed, his voice slow and trembling when he spoke. “I’m sorry, Eren. Really, I am.”

“No, stop that. If anything, I’m sorry we can’t do it again. That’s what I’m more sorry about,” I said softly, shaking my head.

“But it was the first time we actually spent any time alone, and I went and fucked it all up,” Levi said. “Now neither one of us is gonna be comfortable with each other.”

“Levi, hey. Calm down. We still have to see each other, whether we’re comfortable or not. We have to keep up appearances for Petra, alright? And I’m still gonna be bothering you during your shop class every day.”

“You will?” he asked, his eyes lighting up for a moment while they regarded mine. I sat beside him on his bed, hoping to galvanize him into a sense of security again.

“Yeah, I mean, that’s public enough, don’t you think?” I asked. “There’s other people there. It isn’t like,” I trailed off, not sure what else to say.

“Eren you don’t have to try to be civil about this. I just fucked everything up,” Levi argued again.

“I’m telling you that I liked it, too, Levi. You didn’t fuck anything up, but now that we know, I’m just saying that we have to be careful to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” I tried to explain, but there still seemed to be a blockage.

“But, I just don’t understand. How could you, of all people, like what just happened?” He asked, and it seemed like he was genuinely confused.

“Take a deep breath,” I said, placing my hands hesitantly onto his shoulders. “You’re overthinking it. It was a kiss. It isn’t like we sodomized each other,” I said slowly, convincing myself of that too. We hadn’t broken any laws, or rather,  _ he _ hadn’t. I was still a predator in the eyes of the court. Technically kissing a minor wasn’t against the law, but that’s not how the attorneys on Levi’s case would see it, and it made me want to scream. “We didn’t commit sodomy,” I repeated, solidifying it as best I could. “And it’s not gonna happen again, so we really shouldn’t be worrying about it, alright? It’s just gonna stress us out, right?”

“Right,” Levi nodded, his voice sapped of emotion while his eyes searched mine for any kind of answer to all of the questions he had. “But, you liked it, too,” he said as less of a question and more of a resolution.

I nodded fervently. “I mean, enough to let you kiss me a second time,” I replied. “Yeah, I liked it.”

“Okay,” he nodded to himself. “I can live with that.” 

“Me too,” I sighed, practically restraining myself from  _ showing _ him how much I had liked it. I balled my hands into fists and rested them on my knees, waiting for something to change, although I wasn’t sure what. We sat in that stagnant pool of tension for so long that by the time I could register time again, it was dark outside, and Levi had lit his citronella. 

“So, uh, seeing as it’s still raining, and you have no way to call a ride, we have two options. Option one, we wait it out, and hope it’s died down by tomorrow. Option two, we walk you back into town so that your folks aren’t worried.”

“I can go by myself, I don’t want you to have to do all that extra walking,” I responded, smiling unenthusiastically, despite wanting nothing more than to stay with him and wait out the storm.

“You’re sure? It’s dark, now, and you could get hurt, and I’d have no idea where to-” he cut himself off by shaking his head. “Never mind. I’m sure you’re capable of finding your way back to town.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, climbing to my feet while Levi did the same. We stood, facing each other for a moment, and I realized that I would have to get going, if I was going to get home at a reasonable hour. “But, hey, for what it’s worth, I enjoyed spending time with you today.”

“You too,” he nodded, drawing his face into a closed off expression, back to normal, so to speak. “See you tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah, see ya around,” I said while I stepped out of the boxcar and into the storm, making it about halfway to the highway before freezing mid-stride. It felt like in that instant, my heart had been ripped from my chest and stomped on until it quit beating. I had to do something, or I would surely die. “Fuck it all,” I muttered to myself, making up my mind.

Without even realizing what I was doing, I spun on my heel and ran back towards Levi’s house, climbing in again to find Levi pacing the floor with a cigarette between his lips. I closed the distance between us, and plucked the cigarette from his mouth, tipping his chin up and meeting our mouths one more time. I kissed him with a ferocity that I had never felt with anyone up until that moment, and he was quick to respond, moving his lips against mine with a force that matched. He backed me into the nearest wall and wove his fingers through my hair, gripping tightly to it and tugging on my scalp. I pulled back with a gasp, catching my breath for a second before kissing him again. I could feel his tongue swiping my lips and I opened my mouth to let it in. 

“Fuck,” Levi panted between heated kisses, moving his hands to my hips, pinning me harder to the wall with his grip. Finally, I pulled away again, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and resting my chin on the top of his head. 

“Alright,” I nodded, just as out of breath and flustered as he seemed to be. “Now I’m done. Good night, Levi,” I said, releasing him and turning away, leaving without another word, feeling infinitesimally better about leaving him behind, and never doing something like that again. I returned to the highway and began the three mile walk back to my house. 

Finally, drenched and shivering, I made my way back through the front door of my house to see Farlan sitting in the easy chair in the living room, smoking a cigarette and glancing up at me, his eyes widening when he saw the condition I was in. I looked down and saw that my pants were caked in wet dirt from the desert, and the way I shook made it look like I’d escaped a crime scene. I knew exactly what it looked like, and it was my job to convince them otherwise. Either I could throw Levi under the bus, or actively keep something from Farlan and Isabel, that could be a hindrance to the case.

I needed to tell them, because then we could figure out the situation together, and potentially absolve me of crimes if that were to somehow come up in the future.

“Are you okay?” He asked, standing and making his way to me, taking me into his arms for a moment, before holding me back to look me over. “Did he try to hurt you?”

“No, no, I-” I started to say, but my teeth clattering was getting in the way of my verbiage enough to startle Farlan.

“Oh my God, how long have you been outside? You’re freezing!” he exclaimed. “Isabel!” he called, turning and walking to her bedroom, and I couldn’t even find the voice to dissuade him with. 

“What? Yeah?” I heard her yawn before Farlan led her out of the bedroom. “He just showed up, completely soaked. Head to toe,” Farlan said, making far too big a deal of everything, and I was helpless to stop him from doing so. I couldn’t even find my voice anymore.

“Eren,” Isabel cooed at me like I was an actual child. “Go take a warm shower,” she instructed, placing her hands on my shoulders and leaning in. “Farlan’s had a little too much to drink tonight. I’ll try and calm him down, but come downstairs again so you can update us, alright? We need to talk about this as a team.”

“O- Ok- k- kay,” I nodded, still unable to really get anything out of my mouth. Despite that, my anxiety was at least mildly assuaged of the fact that the sappy child I was being treated like at that time was a ruse, that Isabel saw me as a real adult, and not some wimpy intern. I wanted nothing more than to prove to both of them that I could hold my own, but in order to do that, I had to tell them what had happened with Levi. I turned and removed my shoes before walking into the carpeted upstairs, peeling my sopping clothing from my body and cranking the heat of the shower to full blast. I stepped into the scalding stream of water and closed my eyes, feeling the water wash away the cold that clung to my skin and buried within my very bones. Although my body felt warmer almost instantly, the hot water could only do so much to combat the frigidity in my mind, growing so quickly that I could feel it begin to ice over. 

I had had three miles in the rain and a shower to mull my options over, but I still had no idea what to do. I had gone over everything a hundred times to no avail, because there I stood, praying for some kind of answer while I washed my fatal sins from my body.

By the time I got out of the shower, I was no more resolved than I had been getting into the shower, and the expression on my face when I looked in the clouded, streaky mirror told it all. Shaking my head, I hung my clothes over the shower rod and pulled on a pair of way-too soft striped pyjama bottoms and yet another fresh white tee shirt, figuring Isabel must have bought a whole pack of them, but was dissuaded of that theory when I realized that many of the white tee shirts weren’t the same brand. She had individually bought at least four white tee shirts for me, with likely more that I had yet to find. She was a complete godsend, and made it very easy to decide what to wear. I was thrilled that my standard didn’t have to be god-awful patterned button-downs, but, mostly, I was sick of avoiding the issues by thinking about clothing. 

I finally made my walk of shame back downstairs and into the living room, where Isabel sat on the couch with her hair in pink curlers, looking more auburn than fiery orange in the dim lighting of the floor lamps. She also wore a gossamer pink robe with morbidly fuzzy borders that dragged past her feet when she walked and pooled on the floor while she sat. I also took note that Farlan had a fresh glass of scotch, making rings on the coffee table as the condensation slid down the sides, pooling between the bottom of the glass and the wood table while the water seeped into the varnish. 

I waited at my predicament, pondering the juxtaposition of the two possible outcomes of the conversation while Farlan took a long drink from his glass. “So,” he said, swallowing a second time to rid the taste from his mouth. “What happened this afternoon? Where did the two of you wander off to, and why did you come back soaking wet?” he asked, drumming his leg against the floor, making an infuriating tapping sound that only managed to fuel my anxiety. 

“Well, he showed me where he’s living,” I said, already anxious, as even those words alone were a betrayal to Levi, but I was supposed to be acting like Farlan and Isabel were an extension of myself.  _ Yeah _ , I thought to myself,  _ an authoritarian part of myself that I have no say in or control over _ . It felt like I didn’t have command of two thirds of my brain when I told them things, only being one third of the hive mind of the fake Jeager-Magnolia family that had never actually existed. The mental pressure was excruciating, and it felt like I was coming down with a sympathy fever with how hot my face felt, but the only sympathy I felt was for myself. I was screwed.

“Oh?” Farlan chirped inquisitively, quirking his eyebrows up with an expression of childlike curiosity muddling his adult sense of existential nihilism as they blended together. That was a disease that I was fairly certain plagued more people than would ever admit. As I had grown up, I saw how bleak everything was slowly becoming, and was initially disgusted by the fact that my twenties was supposedly the best I would ever get. I had dropped out of high school three months before graduation, because I legitimately hadn’t anticipated living past twenty, but there I was, six years later, standing on the other side of a suicide-fueled percocet addiction and well into a law program, participating in the first trial of a history-making expirement for the justice system, and I  _ still _ couldn’t make up my mind.

I nodded absently at Farlan’s half-assed inquiry, still so deep in thought that I couldn’t tell if I was swimming closer to the surface or farther away, engulfed in the thick black ocean that sat in the back of my mind. I closed my eyes to try to hear my own thoughts better, and when I opened them again, Isabel had the back of her head resting against my forehead.

“You’re burning up, Eren. I’ll bet it’s from being in those wet clothes for so long, out in the cold and the rain,” Isabel tutted officiously, as though she was some kind of M.D. I appreciated her gesture, but I was sure that I was okay enough to continue the meeting.

“I’m fine. Where were we?” I asked, focusing on the tap, tap, tapping of Farlan’s consistantly jittery left leg in an attempt to keep my attention anywhere but the ever changing labyrinth that my mind seemed to be warping itself into.

“You were about to tell us about where Levi’s living,” Farlan said, while Isabel reached for her notepad, clicking her pen impatiently, waiting for me to provide the other two-thirds of the hive mind with the information we needed to properly function. 

“Right,” I nodded, a little dazed, but willing to do just about anything to get that conversation over with. “He’s living south of town, at an old train yard, in a boxcar,” I sighed, resigning a piece of myself in those words, knowing I was doing the right thing, but wondering why I felt so sick about it. 

“Jesus, why so far out?” he asked, and I thought about biting back with a passive aggressive hypothetical question targeted at him, but brushed off the childish thought and proceeded with a much more sophisticated answer. The kind of answer that would make them proud to have me as their missing third of the hive mind.

“I’m betting it’s the only place he can have that he doesn’t have to tell anybody about. Pretty sure he’s avoiding a phone call to child services. It’s a small town. People are nosy,” I said, vastly more eloquently than my prior comment would have come out. “If that gets out, it’s game over for him, and what seems like a little sister.”

“It isn’t on file that he has a little sister,” Farlan replied, shaking his head, but Isabel quickly jumped at the opportunity to defend me while I fought my mild fever off and tried to stay on task. 

“Well, he definitely has one,” Isabel dissented from Farlan, referencing the night Levi had stayed over while she explained the situation before concluding with a far-too-loud-for-eleven-at-night, “I swear to God, who  _ wrote _ our debriefs?! We know virtually nothing! Why was none of this even mentioned to us? Eren, you were at the trials. Did they ever talk about his little sister?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, not remembering a single mention of a little sister at the trials when a thought slammed into me like the black ocean in my mind was now in the business of tormenting me with mental tsunamis. I gasped at the concept and before I could govern it, I heard it spilling from my lips. “What if she died? And that’s why she isn’t mentioned, because she died before any of the crimes took place, and Levi wasn’t living at home anymore.”

“You could be onto something,” Isabel murmured, a darkness casting itself over her expression. “Damn. I’ll bet it’s got something to do with her mother. That woman wouldn’t know maternal instinct if it hit her in the face with a baseball bat,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if she was just making an innocuous analogy, or if she had consciously intended to make a morbid allusion to one of Levi’s earlier killings.

“Can we do anything to interfere with that?” I asked, now completely concerned with potentially saving the little girl’s life. 

“Legally we can’t try to intervene, but if it happens organically, we could call it a “side effect” of the penalty,” Farlan said, deep in moral contemplation. “It’d really help if we knew anything about her. We don’t even have a name, and we can’t ask Hanji for the death certificate of a person we don’t know the name of.”

“Sure we can,” I argued, forcing lucidity into my stream of consciousness long enough to give my two cents. “We could tell her to look it up and get back to us. If we know that she’s likely Levi’s half-sister, we can try to get her to cross-reference birth certificates from the area and the time search it by the mother’s name on the document. Then, with a birth certificate, we can more easily find a death certificate.”

“That’s an interesting thought, Eren,” Isabel said, still transcribing my suggestion into the yellow legal pad. “And I’ll bet it’ll work, but we may not hear from Hanji until it’s too late. Tell you what. If we don’t hear anything from Hanji on the matter 30 days from the point that we ask for her to give us the documents, at your discretion, I’ll place an anonymous call to social services. But I’ll wait for your okay, Eren, because technically, if it’s a hindrance to Levi’s well being, we would need to prioritize him. We’ll lose him if he goes into foster care.”

“Jesus Christ,” Farlan muttered, shaking his head at nothing in particular. The tension in the room was so thick that I could have cut it with a knife, and I felt a sigh of relief escape my lips when Farlan broke the silence. “If we have to pick between saving a serial killer from an inconvenience, and a little girl from a preventable death, and we pick the serial killer, I’m going to get very  _ very _ drunk that night. Just a forewarning.”

“I’m betting we all will,” Isabel said, exhaling slowly and turning to Farlan. “Gimme a swig of that, while we’re on the subject,” she instructed calmly, pointing towards his scotch. He lifted it from the table, leaving the wet ring as a reminder that it was there, and something gave me the feeling that that ring-shaped stain was the first of many that would begin to grace that coffee table. Isabel took a single sharp swallow of the liquor and passed it back to Farlan, whose knee was still churning like a piston, drumming up and down at the speed of light while he replaced the glass over the fresh dark ring on the wood table.

“Fuck,” Farlan muttered, shaking his head and looking at me again. “Alright, Eren, continue.”

“Okay,” I nodded, a weight setting in my heart at the idea that we may have to sacrifice a child for the cause, feeling even more sick to my stomach than I had before. “Well, he’s gotten into taxidermy,” I informed them, knowing the dark implications behind my words.

“Is he killing the animals?” Farlan asked while Isabel silently transcribed the information to the notepad.

“He said he wasn’t,” I said quietly. “And I didn’t see any evidence other than small bones in the fire pit, so I’m guessing it’s more of a passive hobby.”

“And how did you handle that situation when it came up?” Farlan asked quietly, tapping his fingers on the coffee table while he waited for me to respond.

“I tried redirecting him to morgue work. I’m a strong believer that interests are generally on the surface of aptitudes, and if I can get him to see that he’s smart enough to get an M.D., then maybe, he’ll use his interests for the advancement of science,” I explained, hoping I had made the right decision. Isabel hummed in acknowledgement while she wrote down what I had just said.

“A pragmatic approach. I like it,” Farlan nodded. “Alright, and anything else worthy of mentioning?” he asked, and I felt chills run down my spine at what I was about to tell them.

“Um, yeah, actually,” I muttered, looking down at the carpet, focusing on different carpet fibers while I tried to work up the nerve to actually speak. “He, uh, he-” I tried to say, but I cut myself off, not sure how to even approach the sensitive subject matter.

“He what? Did he attack you?” Isabel asked, setting her pen down and looking at me with an expression full of concern. 

“No! No, he didn’t  _ do _ anything,” I said, pausing to reconsider. “Well, he did, but I just- I don’t know what to say. I’m kinda hitting a mental roadblock,” I said, hoping that my honesty would get me somewhere. “I’m sorry.”

“Eren,” Farlan sighed. “Look, I’m sorry that you’re in this situation, but if you tell us what happened, we can help you. Remember, Hanji isn’t here. She doesn’t have to know anything that isn’t perfectly necessary.”

“Right,” I said, taking a deep breath, convincing myself that Farlan and Isabel were not an evil two-thirds of the hive mind, and that we really were working towards the same goal, but at the same time my heart broke a little at the thought of breaking Levi’s trust like that. “Okay. So, um,” I said, taking another deep breath and forcing myself to just spit it out already. “So he kissed me,” I said, but it came out in a rush, like it was all one word.

“Pardon?” Farlan said, choking on his scotch, and pounding on his chest to clear his throat.

“I’m sorry?” Isabel asked, raising a finely manicured eyebrow. “To clarify,  _ he _ kissed  _ you _ ? Because  _ that _ certainly wasn’t in the case file.”

“I mean, yeah,” I nodded, feeling a sinking feeling settle into my body, until Farlan spoke again.

“I don’t think that Hanji needs to know that,” he said quietly, taking another drink of his liquor, finishing off the glass and staring at the ice that slid around the bottom of the glass. 

“But, that could be important,” Isabel argued, pausing her pen mid-sentence, and staring at Farlan from across the room. 

“I think it’d actually put us at an advantage if we kept it to ourselves,” Farlan said quickly. “How did you respond to that? After the fact, I mean. Whether or not you kissed him back is neither here nor there, unless you took it a step farther, in which case, we will have to report that to Zoe.”

“No, we didn’t- No. We basically had a mutual conversation that that wouldn’t happen again and we would try to pretend that it hadn’t happened in the first place,” I said. “But it’s a really sensitive subject, I think.”

“For you, or for him?” Isabel inquired gently, lifting her slender hand and resting it on my back.

“Both of us, I guess,” I shrugged, not sure what else to say on the matter.

“Well, Eren,” Farlan said, letting out a long exhale and interlacing his fingers, resting them behind his head while he leaned back into the recliner. “I’m not here to judge you, or your life choices, and I actually am of the opinion that allowing him to experience a romantic relationship could allow him to gain a sense of empathy, or a close replica of it. However, rules are rules. We like you a lot, Eren. You’re a smart kid, and neither one of us is willing to risk the project by cutting you out of it. I’m going to tell you right now, that I would strongly recommend that you keep to your guys’ word, and have that be a one time thing, but in the case that it is not, I’m going to make an exception and put that on a need to know basis. What do you think, Isabel?” he asked, turning to her and watching her fixed expression.

“I think that’s probably for the best. I think that should be kept to yourself, but please, nothing more until he isn’t a minor, alright? Or preferrably, at all. And I’m only even  _ considering _ this because I agree with Farlan, though I would strongly advise, no, I would really request that you don’t do that again. They haven’t thought about the positive impact of a romantic relationship, and because this is so new, it wouldn’t be in the first draft anyway,” Isabel said, letting out a loud sigh and shaking her head. “And as interested as I am, I’d really want to have direct permission.”

“Right,” Farlan nodded, covering his mouth while he yawned. “That should have been a consideration. I’m not condoning this. In fact, I’m strongly advising against it, but, I’m telling you I don’t want to know.”

“Look, we both said that that was it. It isn’t gonna happen again. We made an agreement that we wouldn’t even speak of it,” I said, trying to assuage their worry, but feeling sudden aches settle into my muscles as sleep pulled at my mind. “I’m sorry, you guys.”

“Eren, we aren’t upset with you, we’re upset with the situation this has put us in. It has nothing to do with you, okay? And we aren’t going to say anything. Let’s just leave it at that. And regardless of what Farlan’s saying right now, I am asking that this doesn’t happen again. You’re putting us in a really tough position,” Isabel explained. “I don’t care if you’re homosexual, Eren, but rules are rules,” she added, before letting out a long sigh and settling back into her seat. I thought to correct her, but decided against it with a shrug and a short exhale. “Regardless of how far we’re willing to bend them for you,” she added, folding her arms. We waited in the tense quiet, and I became acutely aware of the sound of the clock ticking on the wall, counting each second that we waited for something to happen.

It was Farlan that finally broke the silence. “Okay. Enough about that. We’re all tired, and you’re not looking so hot,” he said slowly, settling into a quiet drunkenness that was both hardly noticeable and all-encompassing in the same stroke of the brush.

“Yeah, you need some sleep. You might need to take tomorrow off school. We’ll see in the morning how you’re feeling, okay? It felt like you had a little bit of a fever,” Isabel said. “And you’re already kinda fading in and out, so go upstairs, drink a lot of water, and get some good rest. I’ll come check on you if I don’t see you up before I have to go to work tomorrow.”

“Right, okay,” I nodded, my body much more tired than my mind at that point. I could feel every muscle in my body begging for a break from consciousness, but my brain was running laps. “Thank you, guys.”

“Sure,” Farlan sighed, leaning forward and patting my shoulder. “We all have our vices. Be careful.”

“Nothing is even gonna happen from here on out,” I groaned, trying to be totally clear that the don’t ask don’t tell concept wouldn’t even apply, as I wouldn’t allow a slip up like that again. “I just wanted to tell you, because that’s my job. We work as a team, and I want to be frank with you.”

“Well, hi, Frank,” Farlan said, cracking a drunken smile and extending a hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Farlan.” I rolled my eyes and slapped his hand away.

“I’m being serious,” I said harshly, folding my arms at the snickering man in the armchair. 

“I thought you were being Frank,” he said, feigning confusion before bursting into soft chuckles once more, entirely too amused by his own joke. “Look. I’m tired, work was long, and I’m sick of worrying about Hanji for the day.”

“Agreed,” Isabel said, nodding her head and causing her curlers to bounce in her thick red hair. “I’m gonna turn in,” she said, stifling a quiet yawn. “You should get some sleep, too, Eren. Maybe you’ll sleep the fever off.”

“Okay,” I hummed in response, slowly climbing to my feet and making my way up the stairs, happy to finally get some sleep. Isabel had been right. I felt feverish; my face was burning up, while the rest of my body was still afflicted with strong bouts of chills that shot down my spine and made me require a blanket. I fell asleep with the slight anxiety that I’d be too sick the next morning to be able to make it to school, but brushed it off as I slipped into a dark fever dream.


	14. Chapter 12

My sleep was filled with wild nightmares that felt so real, it felt almost like I was still in them when I woke up, but as soon as consciousness returned to my body, I couldn’t remember a single one. Only the feeling of uneasiness remained once I registered the room around me. My dreams felt so close to me, but just barely out of my grasp. Physically, I felt like my body didn’t want to be a body anymore. I was still feeling too hot and too cold at the same time, and once I opened my eyes, it took me far too long to recognize Isabel standing in the doorway of my too-bright bedroom. 

“Hey, Eren, I’m about to go to work. Can I come in and feel your forehead? I’ve also got a thermometer, so I can get a better read. I don’t want you to go to school today if you’ve got a fever,” she said softly, taking half a step into my bedroom. 

“Sure,” I said, but my voice sounded more like the croak of a dying man. I shuffled up in my bed so that my pillows were propping me up while I waited for her to cross the room and check my temperature. I knew that I’d run a temperature before she even checked me, but I wanted to have the exact temperature, in case I was being some kind of hypochondriac. She stood beside my nightstand and held the top end of the thermometer.

“I’m sure you know the drill,” she chuckled, shaking her head and passing the small glass tube to me. I placed the hard ball underneath my tongue and watched her eyes widen when the mercury began to rise. While she waited for the thermometer to finish adjusting to my body temperature, she lifted a hand to my forehead, gently resting the back of her hand on my face, clicking her tongue at the heat from the contact. She plucked the thermometer from my lips and read the temperature aloud. “Just barely past one hundred degrees, but it’s hard to read these things, so I’d guess you’re at about one-oh-one. Looks like you’re staying home from school.”

“But, I really should go,” I tried to argue. “I told Levi that I’d be there.”

“Well, I’m sure that if you explain to him when you go tomorrow that you had a fever, he’d understand.”

“He’ll think I was bullshitting, that’s what he’ll think,” I muttered, pushing past her and trying to stand on my feet, but was instantly hit with such a strong bout of vertigo that I sat back down on the side of my bed after less than a second. 

“Sleep. We can’t have you running around delirious today. Every second you spend actively with Levi Ackerman needs to be purposeful, and without slip ups. If you have a fever, your mind is foggy, and you aren’t capable of good cognitive function,” she explained, shaking her head at me.

“I’ve had a fever before, Isabel,” I muttered. “You don’t need to tell me how they work.”

“Good, so then if you know all about fevers, Mr. Jeager, then you’ll know the best thing you can do for them apart from a trip to the hospital is resting. Would you rather I drop you off at the hospital on my way to work?” she asked, only speaking again once I had shaken my head, not wanting to go to a doctor about something so trivial. “Good. Then I need you functioning at top notch, and a fever certainly isn’t going to cut it. I’d rather have a job postponed, than a job done sloppily.”

“Fair enough,” I replied, not mentally capable of arguing the point any further while my bed began to look more and more attractive.

“So, sleep now, work later,” she smiled, happy to have gotten my agreement. “I’ll come check on you during my lunch break.

“That isn’t necessary, Isabel. I’ll probably be asleep anyway,” I replied, crossing and uncrossing my legs while I waited for her to leave.

“Suit yourself. I’ll be home at four-thirty,” she said quietly, before spinning on her heel, pausing once she made it to the door frame and turning back to face me. She tossed the thermometer onto my bed before saying, “Check yourself when you wake up, okay?”

“Alright,” I nodded, taking the instrument and setting it on my bedside table before climbing between the sheets. “Bye,” I said, wiggling my fingers at her while she closed the door behind herself. It wasn’t much later that I heard the garage door open and saw the station wagon pull out from the driveway, driving down the block and turning out of the neighborhood. I began to wish that we had heard from Hanji, as I was bored out of my mind, and that at least would have given me something to think about, but as I was wishing for something to think about, I was sucked into the night prior, wondering what kind of thoughts were going through Levi’s head while he was kissing me. I wondered what I could possibly have done to prevent that, but came to the conclusion that I had likely been instrumental in opening Levi’s eyes a little bit. Maybe that was one of his issues, I thought to myself, maybe that was a part of himself he’d repressed. Maybe that experience would help him. That or the realization that would prove to him that he really had no community in the world and shoot him faster into his spiral downward into mental and emotional oblivion. I snorted aloud at my own cynicism before rolling over in my bed and falling back asleep.

I woke up to the sound of my doorbell ringing and when I checked the clock I figured that it must have been Isabel, trying to check on me without waking me, if I was asleep. She was clever, I’d give her that, but unfortunately that godforsaken doorbell would be able to wake everybody buried in the nearest cemetery. Grumbling as I got to my feet, I shuffled down the stairs and at a snail’s pace, I finally pulled the front door open. 

The face that greeted me was not the oddly youthful, glittering expression I had been expecting, but that of a teenage boy with panic written across his face in indelible ink. Levi looked about ten years older and only after looking him over for a moment did I notice Petra slowly approaching the front steps to my house, having lagged quite a bit behind Levi, who had obviously made it to the door much quicker than the redheaded girl did. 

“I swear to God,” Petra muttered, letting out a long sigh as she finally stepped onto the front stoop. “What is with the two of you and manhunts?”

“I told you, he owes me five bucks,” Levi snapped at Petra, whipping his head to the side so quickly I wasn’t sure how his neck hadn’t snapped. “Just give us a second. I need to speak with him. Privately.”

“Then what was the point of dragging  _ me _ along, man? You are  _ so _ stunned,” she grumbled, letting out an angsty sigh before continuing. “And what did you even need five bucks for  _ right now _ ? How was this worth sneaking out of lunch hour?” She paused and finally looked at me. Before Levi could respond, she spoke again, this time forcing a smile while her eyes beamed desperate prayers to no longer being in the scorching heat. “Hi, Eren. I’m sorry to bother you, and sorry I’m being bitchy. It’s just really hot out here, and I don’t appreciate walking  _ half a mile _ in fuckin’ pure hellfire without jumping into a waterfall or something. It’s not you, it’s me,” she grinned while Levi simply rolled his eyes at her, shaking his head and letting out a hiss of an exhale while he waited on my doorstep. 

“Um, why don’t you both come in, and Levi and I can talk upstairs?” I suggested as coherently as I could, given that I had been asleep less than five minutes prior. “I have some sodas in the fridge if you wanna help yourself. Might make the walk back a little better.”

“Just water is fine,” she sighed while I stepped aside to let them into the house. 

“Well, stock up,” I tried to laugh, but my throat was so dry that I just started coughing instead. “Cups are in the cabinet closest to the sink.”

“You don’t have, like, the  _ plague _ , right?” Petra asked, preening her hair in the reflection of a glass platter that Isabel had on a rack to dry.

“No, I’m fine,” I said unconvincingly, shrugging my shoulders and cracking a smile at the small girl in my kitchen. 

“If he had the plague, I wouldn’t be here,” Levi snapped, crossing his arms at his frustrated friend. “You know I don’t have insurance,” he added half-sarcastically.

“Well, you two, book,” Petra said, snapping her fingers and pointing at the staircase. “Cuz the sooner you two finish up getting your shit together, the sooner we can get back to school.”

“Bomb,” Levi muttered, shaking his head while Petra reached into the cupboard I had told her to look in and pulled out a glass. When I looked away, I heard the water running from the kitchen faucet as I ascended the staircase, with Levi following closely behind. We reached the landing that had two doors leading into either my bedroom or my bathroom, and I didn’t like either of those options. I figured talking quietly would obscure our voices enough, even if Petra had wanted to listen in, so I opted to stay in the little landing hallway.

“So,” I started awkwardly, trailing off and looking at the patterns of the wallpaper while I heard him clear his throat.

“So,” he said shortly, looking at the grooves in the wood of the banister. “Okay, first of all, I didn’t ask her to come with me, she  _ insisted  _ on coming with me,” he whispered, his cheeks a little more pink than they were before, this time, not because of the heat, it seemed. “And, uh, I told her you owed me five dollars, so sorry about that, but I need to talk to you.”

“About what?” I asked quietly, my volume slowly mirroring his.

He swallowed and the overlapping wings on his neck shifted while his Adam’s apple bobbed; I could see the discomfort plainly on all of his features before he turned to me and finally spoke. “You said that we weren’t gonna let this affect Petra, right? And then as soon as school rolls around, you don’t even show up,” he bit back at me, even his question sounding more like an accusation than it should have. I could feel the guilt for missing school well up inside of me, while the guilt from letting him kiss me in the first place was about to spill over.

“I’m sorry for giving you that idea, and I knew me missing today would make you think that,” I started, softening my gaze at the yellow floral wallpaper while more words came to me. “But it wasn’t you at all.”

“Well, what was it then?” he asked, staring me down with a look that only packed ice within it. It was like in that second, my body temperature dropped fifteen degrees, and as soon as his gaze averted from me again, I was back to where I was before: tired and feverish.

“I-” I started to say, knowing that saying I had a fever could potentially make me sound like a liar. I also figured that in the case that he believed me, and had the same level of empathy that I assumed, he would feel bad for what had happened because I’d walked home, and him feeling guilty was the last thing I wanted. I paused for a moment, reconsidering that thought. Maybe the guilt could be constructive, I conjectured while I thought of something to say. I could tell by the way his jaw was so tightly clenched that he was getting impatient. In fact, he was well past impatient. He would ultimately walk an entire extra mile that day, in the hottest couple of hours for the early fall, and that was more than enough reason to be running out of patience. “I had a fever,” I sighed, figuring that I shouldn’t be lying to him if I wanted him to continue to trust me.

“Bullshit,” Levi muttered, shaking his head, not even bothering to look at me while he spoke. “Fucking bogus.”

“It isn’t,” I argued, trying to keep my voice low, so that Petra wouldn’t catch any part of our conversation. “Here,” I said, taking one of his fists that rested on the bannister that he was standing behind and pressing the back of it to my forehead. He flinched when I touched him, but let me proceed when he saw what I was doing. “Feel that?”

“Well my body’s thermometer is probably all off right now because of that fucking walk, but you do feel a little warm,” he mused, returning his hand to the banister, balling it into a fist once more while he waited for me to speak again.

“I’m not lying to you, and I won’t lie to you,” I said, though I knew that if the situation ever arose, the second part of that statement would be thrown to the wind. I felt a twinge of pain twist my rib cage as it sat restlessly in my chest. 

“Okay,” he replied, letting out a long exhale through his nose before straightening up and turning towards the stairs. “Well, thanks for the cash, man,” he said much louder than he’d been speaking before, feigning a warmer tone than he’d used to address me just seconds prior. We were careful, trying not to alert Petra that anything had happened between us at all. Not just then, and certainly not the night before. As far as she knew, everything was the same as it’d been twenty four hours prior, and it was our agreement to keep it that way. 

“No problem,” said, a little startled at how quickly he’d descended the stairs, already completely out of sight by the time I took the first step. It was like we were the same side of a magnet, like he couldn’t even be near me without being repelled, and that was certainly not a side effect I’d been hoping for. I needed to get closer to him, not farther away. If I was going to be the only thing that convinced him not to kill, then I really had to step up my game.

“Bitchin’. Let’s book, then. Feel better, Eren,” Petra waved, smiling at me while she ushered Levi back out the front door. “Later!” she called over her shoulder, her long hair wagging behind her while she walked.

“Bye guys, see you tomorrow,” I said, letting out a long sigh as soon as the door closed behind them. I trudged back up the stairs, steadying myself every couple of seconds as I allowed my body to have a response to the fever that was still burning me up. It wasn’t as bad as it had been that morning, but it still rendered me almost completely useless.

As I climbed back into my bed, all I could think about was the next day and wonder what I had to do to regain my lost ground.


	15. Chapter 13

I woke up again around eight p.m. feeling astronomically better than I had before I’d gone to bed. I wanted it to be morning, so that I could go to school and begin to make amends, but instead I crept down the stairs and found Isabel and Farlan sitting on the couch in the living room, their eyes focused on the news program that was playing on the television. 

“Eren!” Isabel chirped, pressing the mute button on the remote control and flashing me a striking smile. “Are you feeling any better?”

I nodded at her, casting a sheepish glance in her direction while I watched her expression shift from concern to relief. Farlan responded before Isabel could, patting a spot beside him on the couch. “Good. I’m glad.”

“There’s leftovers in the fridge if you’re hungry,” Isabel said softly, crossing her legs, and adjusting her soft pink robe accordingly. Her hair was wet and stringy as it fell in loose strands down her back, the subtle greying wisps of baby hair already dry and suspending themselves around her face like a halo.

“I’m okay,” I muttered. “What’s on?” I asked, pointing my thumb at the tv where the anchorman spoke silently on the screen. 

“Oh, nothing we haven’t made it out of,” she chuckled while Farlan lit a cigarette, holding it between his long index finger and his thumb, which was considerably shorter, but still exuded gracile sleekness, exactly like the rest of him. 

“Well, that’s good,” I snorted, folding my arms and looking at the screen while I thought of something better to occupy my time with. I thought about what I would have done back in the 1990s, and the only thing I could think of was to talk to Armin, who would only have been about seven years old when I was. He would have understood anything I could possibly have told him. I was certain that if I were to commit some kind of terrorist act, he still would have visited me in prison. I was then overwhelmed by the urge to write to him, and tell him things that I wish he’d been there to experience with me. “I should actually probably see if I can get some more sleep before school tomorrow,” I said during a particularly long commercial break. 

“Good idea, Hun,” Isabel smiled, taking a sip from a mug of some kind of steaming tea. “You have to be on top of your game tomorrow.”

I felt anxiety begin to creep up the back of my neck, its icy fingers wrapping around my throat and strangling me until I decided that I would tell them what had happened while they’d been away.

“Um, actually, before I go,” I said, handing Isabel’s notepad to her.

“What happened?” Farlan asked, immediately sitting up straighter than he’d been before, his interest piqued while he waited at full attention for me to speak while a fresh tension hung itself in the air.

“During lunch hour, Levi and Petra showed up here,” I said quietly, looking to Isabel and listening to the quiet scratching of her pen against the paper.

“And?” Isabel pushed, her eyes demanding more information from me, despite how gentle her tone of voice was.

“And Levi pulled me aside and said that he thought that we weren’t gonna let what had happened affect Petra. And I explained that I was legitimately sick, and although he seemed a little off after that, I think he’ll be okay,” I explained, pithy in the way that I lectured them, and eager to get upstairs to write to Armin. I wasn’t sure that I’d get anything to him before I got back, but I was sure that I’d personally deliver afterwards.

“Good,” Isabel mused, reading over her notes again. “Anything else we should know about?” she asked after a moment, continuing to speak when I shook my head. “Alright, then. You’re free to go. Good night, Eren.”

“Night, guys,” I said, slowly clambering to my feet and returning to my bedroom, listening to the stairs creak under my weight with each step I took. I closed the door behind me when I stepped through the threshold of my room. I was looking at the moonlight spilling through the parted curtains, creating strips of light that pooled on the carpet. I sat at my desk chair and looked out at the moon, wondering if Levi was doing the same. In doing so, I began to think about how similar we were, even in our differences: I was displaced in time, and Levi was displaced in life. I wondered if he was looking at the full moon peering over the mountain. I wondered if he was looking, too. Letting out a long sigh to myself, I tore my gaze away from the sky that we shared and turned to look at the notebook I had pulled from my backpack. 

Taking a moment longer to clear my mind of the black haired boy that had yanked me into his orbit, I began to write. 

_ Dear Armin, _

_ Today is September 28th, 1975, and so much has happened. You were always ready to listen to whatever I needed to say, so I guess I’m just writing you to try and clear my mind. I really wish you were here. We’d get into so much shit if you were, man. _

As I wrote those words, I chuckled to myself, wondering where he’d fit into the group I’d fallen into. Deciding that he likely wouldn’t have, I decided not to mention it in my letter.

_ I guess  _ I _ would get us into so much shit, while you tried to talk me out of it, but you’ve always been like that. I guess I just miss you. I wish I could tell you everything that’s happened, but I’m sure you’ll ask me all about it when I get back. The seventies are so different to how I remember them, but I guess I was really little when I was here the first time. The news broadcasts are crazy, man, and we had an nuclear strike drill last week. I have vague memories of them from when I was in elementary school, but when I went to junior high, that kinda stopped happening. But now that I’m older, I’m starting to question the effectiveness of ducking and covering. I mean if there were to be nuclear warfare of some kind, I feel like covering my head wouldn’t do very much. Anyway, I guess when I get back he won’t be a criminal anymore, if everything goes according to plan, but even now, he doesn’t  _ seem _ like he would kill anybody. And I have to be specific, because while I don’t think he  _ would _ kill somebody, I definitely think he  _ could _ kill somebody if he felt like he had to.  _

_ He’s actually a decent guy right now, but I can kinda tell as I’m peeling back the layers a little bit, that I’ve definitely got my work cut out for me. But I don’t wanna write all about Levi, this is supposed to get my mind off things, not make it worse. _

_ Anyway, how are you? I know you can’t exactly respond, and I’m basically just writing to myself, but I really miss you, Armin. I miss when you would roll your eyes when I’d crack jokes in class, I miss going out and drinking with you. I don’t know. I’ve been sick all day, so my mind isn’t firing on all cylinders right now. I don’t really know what else to write about, so I think I’m gonna stop. _

Without signing the letter, I tore it from my notebook and read it over another time, thinking about everything I had put into the letter, wondering what Armin would think if I ever told him everything. After letting out another long, cathartic sigh, I decided that I probably would never tell anyone the full extent of what had happened. Not even Armin. Taking the paper in my hands, I began to meticulously shred the note. Tearing it first in half vertically, and then horizontally and so forth until not a single piece of ripped paper had more than two words on it. Satisfied in my destruction for the night, I brushed the scraps of lined paper into my waste can, and pushed the bin back beneath my desk.

I wasn’t sure how else to spend my time, so I crawled back into bed, staring up at my ceiling until I wasn’t entirely sure what time it was anymore. The sun rolled up before much longer and I could hear the birds begin to chirp, reminding me that I should have gotten some more sleep, but hopeful that all of my extra sleep during the day would end up amounting to something in the long run, but as soon as I climbed out of bed to prepare for my day, my bones belonged in a mausoleum for how old and achy they felt. 

I stumbled into the bathroom to freshen up and get dressed before making my way downstairs to grab breakfast before I had to catch the bus. Farlan didn’t seem to be awake yet, but Isabel sat at the dining room table and sipped on a coffee while she read the morning paper.

“Morning,” I nodded, walking past her, checking to see if there was any coffee left in the pot.

“Morning. Sleep okay?” She asked, not lifting her eyes from the article she was scanning while I poured myself a cup of coffee. Not bothering with cream or sugar, I guzzled down the bitter drink and searched the cabinets for any cereal.

“Yeah,” I lied, nodding at her with my back turned. “We’re outta cereal, by the way.”

“It’s on the list. I’m going shopping today,” Isabel replied, slowly, drawing out her words in the way one does when they’re thoroughly absorbed in something.

“Bomb,” I said before I could catch myself. It seemed as though the slang of the times was starting to rub off on me. “Well, I gotta go. Have a good day.”

“You too,” she nodded while I walked out the front door and to my bus stop. I rode the bus and waited to feel the familiar buzz of the coffee hit me. As it did, Petra stood from her seat and sat beside me. 

“Heya, stranger,” she smiled, settling into her seat again while the bus driver turned around and shot her a warning glance from the front seat. She rolled her eyes and shook her head microscopically, letting out a huff at the bus driver that seemed to be cramping her style. 

“Howdy,” I nodded, tipping my head back against the seat and closing my eyes.

“How are ya feeling?” Petra asked, her brown eyes suddenly more maternal than I’d ever seen them before. “Better?”

“Yeah. It was just cuz I walked in the rain the other day,” I shrugged. “I’m fine, now, though.”

“Good,” she nodded, patting my shoulder and flashing me a small smile before returning to her half-zombified, too-early-in-the-morning state of mind, while I let myself do the same. We arrived at school with little pomp and circumstance, slowly swarming the entrance to the brick and metal high school like we were straight out of a horror flick. Petra and I found our seats at the first class of the school day, and that morning, Levi was not among the first into the classroom, and his spot in the back was empty. I almost didn’t think he would even have shown up to class until he staggered in two minutes before the bell. He walked in a way that seemed like he didn’t quite trust the use of his legs, and he had deep purple rings resting beneath his eyes, I noticed when he walked past me, towards the back of the class. I looked over my shoulder at him and the disheveled mop on his head while he took his seat, watching his eyes frantically swim about the room. Even across the classroom from us, he had a sickeningly morbid presence about him that permeated through the classroom almost like rotting meat. 

Petra looked at me with wide eyes when I turned back to look at the board, waiting for the teacher to commence the class time. Her once-sleepy brown eyes were immediately alert, staring into mine with a knowing intensity that I hadn’t felt before or since. In her expression, she was horrified, but there wasn’t much we could do during Algebra. Once we were a little further into the lecture, Petra slipped me a pencil with a small scrap of notebook paper wrapped around it. Taking the note discreetly, I passed the pencil back to her and looked beneath my desk to read what she had written. 

_ Meet me during lunch _ , the note read and once I had finished it, I shoved it into my pocket for later disposal. I looked up at the board once more, and could feel Petra’s eyes on me while I gave her a subtle nod of my head so that she knew I understood. 

We went through the motions of our class until lunch time and met up in the cafeteria, agreeing to split up and look for Levi, only to turn around and spot him at our lunch table, with his arms crossed on the surface and his face pressed into the space between them.

Oluo and Riko sat on his left, leaving no seat for us directly beside him, so we made our way over and sat across from him. 

“Levi,” Petra murmured, reaching over the table and placing her hand on the back of his head, stroking down towards his neck.

“Mm?” he hummed slowly, like he was half asleep while he responded to her.

“Are you okay? You seem kind out of it,” she asked, dragging her fingernails back up his neck, running them up the edge of his tattoo. 

He mumbled something that I didn’t quite catch, and it seemed like Petra was having trouble understanding what he’d said as well, asking him to repeat himself. He barely lifted his face from his arms and looked at her with his dull grey eyes. In the shade of his hair, his alabaster skin, coupled with the dark circles made him look skeletal. I wondered why he looked so rough, when he’d been fine the day prior.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Levi muttered, dropping his head back down.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Petra snapped, a mature sternness in her voice that startled me when I heard it. “You’re not allowed to take shit out on me. Be decent. I’m just trying to help you. Why do you look like you just crawled your way out of a cemetery?”

“None of your business,” Levi replied, his voice muffled by his arm where his mouth rested. 

“What are you on?” she asked him, scoping in on what exactly was up with him. Now that she’d mentioned it, I could see exactly what he was talking about.

“Fucking nothing,” he hissed, snapping his back up straight and shooting daggers at her with the empty gunmetal eyes. His expression was full of venom, but, as usual, his eyes were completely empty, devoid of life. “It doesn’t matter,” he amended, and when those words escaped his lips, I felt a crushing guilt when I eyed him from across the table. I wondered if I had been to blame for whatever was going on that morning.

“Hey,” I finally chimed in, unable to watch him snap at Petra any longer. “Do you wanna take a walk? You don’t have to say anything, but if you need a break, I’d be happy to go with you.”

“No,” he muttered, seemingly inspired by my words, as he rose to his feet, and slung his bag over his shoulder. “Keep on truckin’, guys,” he said, turning from the rest of us and walking towards the exit to the cafeteria.

“What’s his deal?” I heard Riko ask while I scanned the area for anybody that seemed to have noticed him, but as usual, he was capable of moving through the hordes of students almost completely undetected. Armed with the knowledge that nobody seemed too put off by the small scene he had caused, my feet carried me after him against my will. “Where are  _ you _ going?” she called after me, but Petra smacked her on the shoulder, a little harder than necessary to shut her up. I could hardly even feel my legs moving, my body feeling more like it was floating after him than anything else. I made it out of the cafeteria door he had used to exit and looked down both directions of the hallway.

I didn’t see him either way, and although it was more likely that he’d be towards the back of the school given everything I knew about him, something told me to walk quickly out the front of the school, or I’d miss him. 

I practically sprinted out of the door after him, frantically looking around like a lunatic once I got outside. 

“Levi!” I called after him when I saw him at the far end of the parking lot, walking south along the sidewalk. Not on the sidewalk, in the emergency lane beside it. He obviously wasn’t in the right state of mind, and that became acutely clear to me while I ran after him. He stepped closer to the actual lanes of the road, looking like he wanted to get to the block kitty corner to the one we were on. He didn’t look back at me, and the way each step was an overcompensation for the last, I could tell that he wasn’t just a little drunk or something. He was absolutely wasted, even four hours after I’d seen him last. As I closed in on him, he took the first step into the road, not even bothering to notice the car that was speeding towards him. “Levi, stop!” I shouted, sprinting faster at him while he staggered further into the lane. The driver of the car certainly didn’t have her mind on the road, I realized when she didn’t slow down, and Levi was too out of it to register the panic in my voice. 

I reached him just as he looked up and saw the speeding car, and the woman who had only just noticed Levi, and would never have been able to slow down in time. I clutched his arm and yanked him with all the strength I had in my body towards the side of the road, pulling so hard that I lost my balance myself, and almost fell onto the asphalt. Without stopping, the woman honked her horn several times as she continued to drive down the road. 

“What are you doing here?” he bit, struggling to stand still without losing his balance. 

“What am I doing? What are  _ you _ doing? You about got yourself killed!” I shouted at him, gripping onto his shoulders so that he would stay on his feet.

His face twisted into a humorless smirk and he let out a quiet scoff before responding with, “So?”

“So, what were you thinking?” I asked, knowing that we would get in trouble with the teachers if we stayed outside any longer, so I made the decision to walk him away from the school, hopefully to a park, or something, where he could sleep off whatever had gotten him so wasted in soft grass without too much public speculation. It was perfectly common for somebody to sunbathe in park grass, whereas it would raise suspicion if he were to be laying in an alley of some kind. I decided that I would have him lie down at the first inconspicuous location I found, not even thinking about how I’d left school and all of my things inside. I wasn’t thinking about myself; Levi’s well being was the only thing on my mind in that moment. 

“I dunno, I didn’t see that lady until you grabbed me,” he muttered, shaking his head while I guided him down the sidewalk, making sure to actually walk on the light grey cement, as opposed to on the road. I didn’t want to risk anything more.

Levi looked as terrifyingly out of place as a bat in the daytime, and exuded the same amount of danger as well. “You’re welcome, by the way,” I snorted, reaching up and squeezing his hand as it rested on my shoulder for support.

“Yeah, whatever. Don’t get cocky, now, brat,” he huffed, losing his balance for a moment, but catching himself on my arm before he could hit the ground. “What are you still doing here? Beat it.”

“No,” I replied. “If anybody sees you fucking floored the way you are right now, they’ll have the cops on your ass so fast. I’m taking you to a park so you look less arrestable.”

“That’s fucking bogue, man. Leave me alone,” he replied, and I could have slipped on the ice in his words if I hadn’t been being careful. His wasted eyes were misty, but still bit to the bone, and the sneer that warped his lips was enough to send anybody running for the hills. “Get the hell away from me.”

“Why? Why are you so against me helping you?” I asked, stiffening as Levi overcompensated another step and gripped my shoulder tighter than he had before.

“Why the fuck do you think, you fucking moron?” Levi argued acidically, even while he let me lead him farther from the school. His voice was quieted down a little, in half-assed acknowledgement “You think I can be alone with you right now? What planet is that a fucking good idea on?” There was obvious self-inflicted pain in his voice while he spoke, and finally we reached a small grassy plot with a metal playground sitting in a sea of dried out wood chips. I led him to an oak tree, knowing it was landscaped, because it was naturally far too arid to have such a large shade tree, let alone the lush green grass that we sat on. 

“You’re not alone with me, Levi,” I said quietly enough that I knew only he would hear me. “We’re in public. Anybody could pass by right now. Just lemme make sure you’re alright. We’re out in the open,” I assured him again, helping him sit down without jostling him. “There’d be too many witnesses if either of us tried anything.”

“Well, you see, that’s exactly the dilemma, now isn’t it?” Levi said, lying back against the grass and closing his eyes, and I wondered if he was enjoying the shade as much as I was. 

“What is?” I asked, wondering where in the plan he was taking issue while I sat against the abnormally wide tree trunk.

“Well, it poses the question,” he murmured, his eyelids still practically glued shut. “Would I rather fear prying eyes, or would I rather have instant gratification followed by instant regret?”

I was stunned by what he’d said, a little taken aback about the fact that, if I had been reading him correctly, that he was referring to me as instant gratification. “I don’t know what’s worse, honestly,” I replied. “I wish I did, and could just tell you.”

“Me too, Eren,” he said, his voice already half-asleep. I watched his long fingers as they plucked at the manicured green lawn, genuinely unsure of the appropriate response. 

“What did you take?” I asked, curious to see if he would even facilitate such a question.

“I dunno,” he shrugged slowly, extending his arms above his head before returning them to his sides, this time resting one of his hands on my knee. His words were escaping his lips in a slower manner than they had before, and I could tell he was about to crash. “I think he called it fairy dust. But that’s just the street name. I don’t actually know what it is.”

“That’s so fucking dangerous, Levi,” I replied, feeling my heart plummet through my chest and into the ground beneath me, resting my hand on his and closing my eyes for a moment. I realized that there wasn’t exactly much I could do for him without getting him into legal trouble, so all I could do was wait with him. “You’re sure you’re okay?” I asked after a moment of wondering whether or not he’d make it out of that afternoon unscathed.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, drifting in and out of consciousness, “I’m fine.” Those were the last words he uttered for another several hours, and all I could do was sit and wait impatiently for him. I wasn’t sure at a couple points in the afternoon if he was still breathing, and always felt immense relief when I caught onto his chest slowly rising and falling. 

When the sun began to sink in the sky, I decided it was time to try and wake him up. Reaching forward and nudging his shoulder, I whispered his name, clearing the hair from his forehead and waiting for him to regain consciousness. 

“Levi,” I said, a little louder, while I shook his shoulders a little harder. Failing that, I hit him. That proved to be the most successful method of arousal thus far. Inhaling sharply, his now panicked eyes snapped open and he immediately sat up, scanning the dimming surroundings as the daylight escaped them.

“Eren? Where am I?” he asked, while his eyes focused on the world around him. “What time is it?” he groaned, rubbing his eyes and staring at where his hand had rested on my leg for the last five hours or so.

“Hey, it's about six,” I whispered. “We’re in the park. Do you remember how we got here?” I asked him, wondering how long ago he’d completely blacked out. He only shrugged at my question until, remaining silent until I asked another question. “How are you feeling?” 

“Like hell,” he snorted, scooting backwards until his back was beside mine, up against the unusually large shade tree. 

“I believe that,” I nodded. “Taking random mystery drugs tends to do that to you,” I mumbled, avoiding his eyes, afraid that he would see the worry in them 

“But you stayed here the whole time?” he asked quietly and I nodded at him in the dying light. “Thank you.” It was then that I realized that it didn’t matter one way or the other if we looked at the moon and thought of each other, didn’t matter whether we thought about each other at all on our own, because the gravity that we felt in each other’s presence lingered long after we had left each other. The genuine look in his eyes while he thanked me, coupled by his body being only inches away from mine was practically a lethal dose of him, and would be a pain inside of me for at least a couple of days. I realized also that there was no way to get any kind of antidote to him either. 

“Eren, I remember something,” he said softly. “Did you pull me out of the way of a car?”

My only reply was nodding grimly, wishing he hadn’t remembered that part specifically. “Yeah,” I whispered.

“Why’d you do that? You could've saved yourself some trouble,” he muttered, and it took a moment for me to realize that he was being serious, genuinely not understanding why I would feel like saving him. 

“Just because we’re having a hard time right now, doesn’t mean I want you dead, Levi. It isn’t even like I have no opinion, either,” I began, turning towards him and trying to explain to him the intricacies of the human mind that he couldn’t quite grasp. “I don’t want you to die, Levi. Fullstop. I’d much rather have you here than not, do I make sense?”   
  


“Sure, but why? It seems like I’m inconveniencing you, right? So then why would you willingly rescue an inconvenience? If midterms were a person, and it looked like they were walking into traffic, I would just look away and pretend I hadn’t seen them. Why didn’t you do that?” Levi tried to explain where his train of thought was taking him, and the more he said, the more I wanted to engulf him within my arms and tell him everything.

“Levi, even though we have a lot going on right now, that doesn’t mean I’d rather you were dead. Not at all. Not even a little bit,” I said quietly, unsure of how better to explain myself than that. “Just come here,” I said, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and pulling him closer to me, where he fell limply against my chest. 

“You mean that?” he asked after a long silence, his lips resting against my collarbone while his arms loosely wrapped themselves around my waist in return.

“Of course I mean that. I’d never want that, Levi,” I whispered, resisting the urge to give him a kiss.

“I’m sorry, Eren,” Levi murmured. “I went and fucked everything up, and now you feel responsible for my well being, right? Because you don’t want to feel guilty?” I could tell how his train of thought was reaching that conclusion, but I had no idea how to tell him he was wrong. 

“Don’t apologize, I care about you because I’m genuinely invested in our friendship, not because I feel some kind of obligation,” I tried to tell him, but he wasn’t having it.

“Yeah, right,” he snapped, speaking into the skin of my neck. “I’ve never been genuinely invested in a friendship in my life.”

“What about Petra?” I asked, pointing out that he consistently spent time with her every day, even if he didn’t necessarily want to.

“There’s a difference between enjoying someone's company, and holding onto them after everything’s gone to shit between us,” he said, no longer speaking in metaphors, or using anybody else as an example. While he looked at me and searched my eyes for a response, I could feel my cheeks and ears heat up to the point that I wondered if I had heatstroke.

“Nothing’s gone to shit Levi, God,” I sighed, shaking my head at him, enjoying the feeling of the cool breeze that suddenly blew against my skin. “You really think that our entire friendship has to be over because we did something we shouldn’t have? If anything, the fact that we know shit about each other, that we both have in common, should bring us closer together as friends, not farther apart. I, for one, have no problem being your friend, Levi. None at all, so long as you’re a decent person.”

He froze for a moment, processing what I’d just said before shaking his head. “No, that isn’t how that works.”

“How? How is that not how that works? You think that just because I kissed you that I hate you now? How does that make any sense at all?” I finally snapped, frustrated at Levi’s blockheadedness. “Levi, if anything, the fact that I kissed you means that I like you  _ more _ than most people, not less.”

“Answer this for me then,” he said, looking up into my eyes for a split second before looking back down at his own feet. “If somehow one of us was a girl, would you do it again?”

“Levi, I’d do it again, even if neither one of us was a girl,” I explained. “Frankly, I’d prefer it that way,” I chuckled, holding completely still in an attempt to maintain the grasp on my self control while my heart threatened to hammer a hole right through my chest.

“Me too,” he murmured, his eyes fixed on my lips, and I only knew that because mine were fixed on his. I was practically tearing up, using every ounce of strength in my body to keep myself away from him, and it looked like he was doing the same. “I- y’know, it’s getting dark,” Levi said suddenly, both of us recoiling from each other, the gravity between us shattering into a million pieces. Our eyes were wide as we stared each other down. “I should get home, uh, by myself. And you should also go home before it gets too late.” He stood to his feet and I began to follow suit, but before I had completely made it upright, he began to walk towards the sidewalk. “See you, um, later, yeah,” he said while he quickly walked away from me and into the darkening twilight. 

“Yep. Uh, totally. You too,” I said awkwardly, walking in the opposite direction as him, towards my house, trying not to think about what would have happened if I hadn’t followed my intuition and gone out the front of the school first.


	16. Chapter 14

The next day we all sat together during lunch hour to discuss final details of our Homecoming plans, but all of us knew better than to bring up the events of the day prior. Levi still seemed to be a little dazed by the aftershock of whatever drugs he’d taken, which Farlan and Isabel informed me was actually heroin, if he’d had the correct street name. It was understandable that he was still out of commission, I figured, casting a glance at his dreary eyes that swept the occupants of our table. Ollie and Riko wanted to see the game, Petra and I weren’t entirely enthusiastic one way or the other, but Levi seemed to be vehemently against the concept of watching a football game for whatever reason, but wouldn’t explain himself when we asked about it. It was decided that we would go to the game, but only the latter half, so that we could see who won, before we made it back for the dance.

When Friday finally rolled around, we did just that. Marco drove his bus around like it was public transit, stopping at each of our houses and letting us board. It was late afternoon, and the end of the game would give us two hours of time to get ready for the dance. Marco then drove to the football field where we were immediately met with the whoops and hollers of excited high school students and their parents. I could feel some immediate anxiety from the sheer mass of the crowd we were wandering into. The amount of words spoken between Levi and Petra during that week was at a record low. Levi’s bad decision on Wednesday was enough to make Petra too upset to speak with him any more than she needed to, and Levi’s baseline blase mannerisms weren’t helping one bit. Having them both in close proximity for the entire evening was more than an invitation for a bomb to go off.

“Hey, uh, I don’t think I’m gonna go in,” Levi muttered as we got in line to pay for our tickets. “Too many people.”

“Do you want me to wait out here with you?” Petra asked, resting her hand on his shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. She was clearly trying to extend an olive branch, but Levi only seemed to brush her off.

“I don’t know. Do whatever you want,” Levi sighed while the others began to get their tickets from the ticket booth. The air that night was alive, buzzing and warm while the players fought for victory. I had never been much of a football person, and so was relieved that there would be at least one person waiting outside of the game in case I wanted to wait with him. 

“Well,” she said, teasing his hair with her fingertips. “I think I’ll probably wait out with you then. It gets so loud in the stands.” Her words and actions were innocuous enough on the surface, but I knew better than that. She didn’t trust him. She didn’t trust that he wouldn’t get high like he had the other day, but was too polite to tell him that. I could see the worry in her expression when he started to shake his head.

“You don’t have t-” Levi started to say, but Petra spoke over him in clipped frantic chirps.

“I- I think I will,” she replied, toying with a strand of her scraggly red hair, twisting it between her fingers and letting out a sigh. “Ya know, I’d rather, um be out here, in case.”

“In case of what?” He prompted, but I could see that he knew what. All of us knew why Petra was anxious, but Levi was the only one spiteful enough to bring it up. He was egging her on, and I was shocked when she took the bait.

“Why do you think?” she finally snapped at him, shaking her head while the rest of us froze and waited for the thick tension between the two to subside, but as long as we waited, the tension only grew thicker, drowning us in their argument.

“I dunno, why don’t you tell me?” He asked, taking a step closer to her, shooting her down with his eyes. “While we’re on speaking terms, I mean.”

“We were never not on speaking terms, Levi. You’re welcome to talk to me anytime, but you don’t give a shit. You never talk to me unless I talk first. This last week just proves it,” she hissed. “What I think doesn’t concern you, does it?”

“Not really,” he shrugged, knowing exactly how vindictive he was being underneath his stark monotony. His lips were warped into a conniving sneer that reminded me exactly why I was back in the 1970s. Watching the slowly escalating situation was a grim reminder of how quickly Levi could change. He’d been alright not even ten minutes prior, but there he was, laying into Petra by stabbing her in her deepest insecurities. “Never has, never will,” he muttered, folding his arms at her before continuing. “Honestly, Petra, I don’t give a flying fuck what you think of my choices. I’ll do whatever I want. I don’t fucking need you to mother me, It’s a free goddamn country.”

“You don’t mean that,” Petra replied, backtracking and trying to maintain her front of confidence, but her voice wavered at his cunning aggression. “You care about me,” she said quietly, almost like she was trying to convince herself of it more than she was trying to convince Levi.

“You’re not special, Petra,” Levi hissed like a true villain. “Not to me, not to anybody. None of us are. We could all die today, and the majority of the planet wouldn’t even bat an eyelash. Think about that for a second. Nobody gives one single shit if we live or die. We aren’t celebrities, or important political people, so at the end of the day, I can do all the motherfucking drugs I want and  _ still _ have almost nobody give a damn.”

The fire in Petra’s eyes made me pleasantly surprised that she didn’t try to hit him by the time I spoke. “Hey, hey,” I said, placing my hands on Petra’s shoulders from behind. “You’re hurting her, Levi,” I said as gently as I could, trying my hardest to make him understand. “You can’t hurt your friend like this. All she’s doing is worrying about you. The least you could do is be civil, alright?” 

“Why do you suddenly give a shit?” he asked, while Riko took Oluo’s hand and discreetly led him into the game, leaving just Marco to chaperone the three of us. 

“Suddenly? Levi, what are you talking about? I’ve given a shit since the day I met you,” I argued, stepping past Petra and giving her a final pat on the shoulder. “I have  _ shown _ you that I give a shit, Levi.” I didn’t want to be specific, for fear of our private lives becoming public, but I knew he understood what I was saying. “We all give a shit, Levi. We care about your fucking well being, even more than you do it seems like. Now, you don’t have to be grateful, but you certainly don’t need to go attacking your best friend over the whole thing, either.”

His eyes widened for a second while he processed what I’d just said to him before looking to Petra, his guarded expression softening for a moment while he looked at his friend. “Petra. You need to stop worrying about me,” he said slowly, but then took her into his arms. Her frail arms weakly wrapped around him in return, hanging limply behind his back. “Okay?” he asked, pressing a kiss to her forehead and waiting for her response. 

Petra didn’t respond, because no matter what she said to him, it would end up damning her. Either she said yes, and allowed him to use his body as a dumping ground for mind altering drugs, or she said no, and potentially fractured her relationship with him. Levi knew exactly the kind of position he was putting her in, and I wished that there was more I could have done for her, but she needed to make the choice for herself. I couldn’t tell her what to do. Even though it looked like he was being sweet, the level of manipulation he was using on her was nauseating. Even Marco seemed to be catching onto Levi, despite the unholy sum of weed he’d smoked before the game.

“Look, man, if you wanna stay out here, that’s your business, but if you’ll excuse me and Ms. Ral, we have a date to get to,” Marco finally said, pulling the limp girl away from Levi and leading her into the crowds of onlookers. Her expression was haunted, like she had no idea where she and Levi stood anymore. In a second, he had crushed all of her confidence beneath his pinkie finger. He was being a monster, and he knew it. “You’re welcome to join us, Eren,” Marco called over his shoulder while they paid for their tickets. He enclosed Petra in his oversized jean jacket and toted her along with him like he was her older brother. I understood why she liked him, but I couldn’t think about Marco and Petra any longer, because I was now alone with the future serial killer. 

“What the hell’d you do that for?!” I snapped when they were out of earshot. “Are you kidding me?”

“What are you talking about? I was being honest,” he scoffed, shaking his head at me and beginning to walk away from the football field. I followed after him, not willing to give him time to potentially do more drugs. I didn’t think he would, but with the way his mind was working, I couldn’t be sure.

“Were you, though? Cuz you just pulled so much shit outta your ass, it's a wonder that your intestines didn’t come, too. You had no place to be such a dick head to Petra, man. She’s your friend,” I explained. “Trying to get a rise out of her is so stupid.”

“You mean to tell me you wouldn’t?” Levi asked, glancing in my direction and raising an eyebrow. 

“Of course not! I’m not cruel to my friends if I can help it, no matter how much I feel like they’re inconveniencing me,” I said sternly, hoping to drill that concept into him and lobotomize him with it. 

“Oh really?” Levi asked skeptically, thick sarcasm in his voice while he continued. “Because I’d say it’s pretty cruel to lead Petra on like that, while we’re on the subject of her. Especially when the both of us know that you’d pick me, given the opportunity.” He certainly wasn’t pulling any punches.

“Alright, first of all, being nice to somebody isn’t the same as leading them on. To be fair, we haven’t even talked about relationships. And if she asked me out right now, I’d tell her no. But that’s got nothing to do with you, okay? I’d tell her no because I’m not ijinterested in dating her, not because of something we did and then promised we wouldn’t do again. Honestly, Levi,” I huffed, shaking my head at him. “And after that stunt you just pulled, I wouldn’t pick you, either. I’m perfectly happy being single.”

“Yeah, right,” Levi snorted, sitting down on a picnic table and waiting for me to sit beside him. 

“I’m serious, Levi. I’m not interested anymore. I don’t date people who treat their friends like last week’s garbage,” I replied with a shrug, but while it hurt to admit aloud, I knew that I was being honest while I spoke. 

“Right, okay,” he sneered, scanning the area for bystanders before he pressed several kisses to my neck, letting his lips linger on my skin until I pushed him off of me. His hands had moved to my waist which made it harder to push him away. I practically threw him backwards and when he looked at me again, his lips wore a large smirk.

“Seriously, Levi,” I whined, not sure if I was capable of physically resisting his advances. I could fight him off just fine, but his lips on my neck had stirred me up inside, and almost made me forget why I was mad at him. Almost. “You need to stop. Start by being nice to Petra, and we’ll talk.”

“Eight seconds, Eren. Gotta do better than that,” he murmured, raising an eyebrow at me. “Be more convincing. Don’t wait eight seconds before you push me off.”

“Look, I’m leaving. If you wanna apologize to Petra, that’s your business, but as of right now, I’m Petra’s friend, not yours,” I said, standing up again and beginning to make my way back to the game. 

“Wait, Eren!” Levi called after me, and I could hear footsteps pick up behind me. “Please!”

“No, Levi, you don’t get it; I’m done,” I told him, knowing that I couldn’t actually be done, considering that I was technically at work, but figuring I could use some manipulation of my own on him. I was still a little stunned over the fact that he had laid into Petra like that, and I knew that she deserved better from him. “You made your bed, and now you can lie in it.”

“I didn’t mean what I said to her!” he exclaimed. Bingo. That’s what I’d been waiting to hear from him. Regret. “I’m sorry!” It was beautiful, the fact that he felt bad. That meant that I could work with him. If he was remorseful, then I had a chance at trying to mold him into the kind of person that isn’t a murderer.

“Why don’t you tell her that?” I shrugged, quickly buying a ticket to the game and finding a spot beside the anxious redhead. Not sure he would be able to swallow his pride enough to apologize to her, I took the first step for him by initiating a reconstructive conversation.

“Hey, Eren, I’m sorry about what happened out there,” Petra sighed, a ghastly wistfulness in her speaking. I hated that she felt the need to apologize to me.

“Don’t apologize, Petra, I promise it wasn’t your fault,” I muttered, reaching over and squeezing her shoulder. “Levi was trying to pick a fight with you, and he was gonna say whatever he needed in order to accomplish that. None of that is your fault Petra, you’ve got every right to be worried.”

“Thanks,” she hummed softly, pulling me into a quick hug before continuing. “Honestly I don’t even know what to think anymore. Does he really not care about me? We’ve been friends since middle school. And, I just-”

“Petra, honey,” I replied, taking her hand in mine and squeezing it while I rubbed the back of it with my thumb. “If you’ve known him for several years, you gotta know that he’s got some issues he’s dealing with, right? He can’t help how he gets sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you have to lay down and let him walk all over you. You did really well calling him out today,” I said slowly, hoping to get her to understand that she was in the right. “I don’t know that he’ll ever apologize to you, and you deserve an apology, I promise, but he did say that he didn’t mean what he said to you.”

“He said that?” she asked, batting her long, tear stained eyelashes at me, like the idea of Levi’s remorse was some foreign concept. 

“He did,” I nodded, and then, like clockwork, Levi emerged from the crowd and sandwiched me between himself and Petra. Neither one of us spoke to him, only waited for the next play from the playbook while the jocks all jumped on each other in the name of football. When the referee called a foul and the players regrouped, the crowds fell silent, and Levi took that as an opportunity to say something to Petra. 

“Hey,” he murmured, leaning over my lap and using a hand on my upper inner thigh to balance his weight. I couldn’t exactly move it without drawing attention to it, and so silently waited for their discussion to finish. “Petra, I don’t know what happened back there. I do actually care about you, and I’m sorry for saying that I don’t. I dunno what I’d do without you, man. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Levi, I know you’re frustrated, but I’m allowed to be worried about you, especially after what happened on Wednesday,” she said, the notes in her voice playing like a song while she expressed her feelings to him. 

“I know you are, kid,” Levi nodded, finally removing his hand from my leg, which forced me to exhale. Apparently I hadn’t done that enough while he’d been touching me. “We cool?” he asked, shooting a soft glance of iced silver at the redhead that sat beside me.

“I- you really hurt me, Levi,” Petra said, looking first to me and then to Levi, her brown eyes searching us for the answers to her dilemma. “We will be. I can promise you that, okay? Just lemme process it.” 

“I can live with that,” he nodded, scooting back into the metal bench of the stands and spreading his legs enough that his elbows could rest on his thighs while he boredly glanced at the game. We had only fifteen minutes left, and the crowd was continuing to surge with more energy as each second passed. When I was certain that everybody was too enthralled by the game to bother looking at me, I decided to give Levi a small reward for an apology I hadn’t expected. I let my hand slowly wander outside of my personal space and across the border into his. It started with his knee, but very slowly, making sure to avoid notice from the masses, I traced my fingers along the inseam of his jeans. At first, I could see that Levi was still trying to feign interest in the football game, but before too much longer, when my hand rested between the top of his leg and his hip bone, he glanced over at me, his eyes wide and misted over. “What are you doing?” he whispered, taking a gentle hold of my wrist. He wasn’t amused that time, only staring at me with eyes blown to smithereens and lips parted in what could have either been arousal or agony.

“Hopefully something you’re okay with,” I scoffed quietly, turning so that my body would be obscuring my hand, should Petra or Marco have looked over and seen what I was doing. Luckily neither of them did, and I was pretty sure Marco was asleep, tossed into an oblivious stoned slumber that only gave me and Levi more cover. 

“Well yeah,” he sighed while my hand continued to palm him. “But why?”

“Don’t question it,” I murmured, scanning the area for any lingering eyes before sliding my hand against him a little faster than I had before. I was sure I couldn’t get him off completely before the game was over, but I just wanted him to know where we stood. 

“Not- ah- not questioning it,” he muttered, squeezing his eyes shut and curling his upper lip while the muscles in his face all constricted before my eyes. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but I was certainly content watching him slow his breathing a little and try not to draw attention from other members of the crowd. He had a soft pink blush blossoming beneath the ivory skin of his cheeks, and his fists were bunching the fabric of his jeans up on his knees. “Fuck.”

“Touchdown!” The announcer screamed, snapping us out of our hedonistic haze, and forcing our eyes to the field. Levi gasped when I pulled my hand away from him, both of us jumping at the sudden outburst. Cheerleaders screamed wildly and threw each other into the air, and it took me far too long to realize that it wasn’t our team that scored the points.

“God dammit!” Petra snapped from beside me, and Marco, upon waking, began to laugh ceaselessly at something that must have gone over all of our heads. “What are you laughing at?” she asked Marco, who only shrugged and laughed harder.

“I don’t even know, man,” he breathed between peals of laughter that swept all of the oxygen from his lungs. “He just- he just fuckin’ yelled touchdown, and then I-” he tried to say before bursting into laughter again. 

“Okay, well Marco’s jelled out,” Petra snorted, turning and smiling at me and Levi, who each made a very poor attempt at making it seem like we were paying attention to what she was saying, laughing breathlessly as we barely avoided detection by the masses. 

“I can see that,” Levi snorted, staring at the slumping boy that chortled in the stands. As pink as his cheeks had been only seconds prior, his face was entirely drained of color when I worked up the wherewithal to look at him again. It wasn’t as thought he’d gone from blushing to normal, it was like he’d gone from the North Pole to the South Pole in the blink of an eye. Everything on his features looked a little different from how it had before. We had both known it wouldn’t last very long, but we were both also now sufficiently secure in where we stood with one another, whether or not our exact placing was clear. I was sure that Levi held a certain trust regarding me, but beyond that, I had no clue where we stood, and for whatever reason, I was okay with that, because I couldn’t describe where he stood with me, either. 

“Yeah, clearly,” I grunted in agreement, folding my arms and focusing on the score board. Even with the touchdown and the subsequent field goal, we still had seven points on them, so in order to beat us, the opposing team would still need to make two more touchdowns.

In those last fifteen minutes, we scored another touchdown, only solidifying our victory by the time the timer ran out, calling the end of the final play. At the end of the game, we came back into contact with Oluo and Riko, who we found leaning up against Marco’s bus while they waited for us. Ollie’s hair was significantly more disheveled, and Riko’s red lipstick was smeared down the side of her mouth, and her eyes were still a little glazed over, it seemed as we got closer to them. 

“Seems like we weren’t the only ones that took advantage of the crowd,” I snorted, leaning down and talking so quietly that I wasn’t even sure Levi had heard me speaking in his ear.

“No shit,” he muttered, only looking forward, not casting even a sideways glance in my direction. “We cleaned up better than they did, though,” he said, and it sounded like he should have scoffed, or rolled his eyes or something, but his voice remained perfectly expressionless, not even rising and falling for inflection. Listening to him was like looking into a slab of glass: anything I thought I could see was really just my own reflection. 

“So, we gonna go to each person’s house and get ready for the dance, then?” Riko asked, waving at Petra from across the parking lot. The redhead nodded at her friend before Riko pulled her into a sudden tight hug, pulling her by her bent arm and yanking her like a ragdoll. “Sorry we left you, ya know” she said to her friend once she was securely in her arms.

“No problem. I get it. We were all kinda spazzing out there for a minute,” she sighed, patting Riko’s back and nodding into the taller girl’s shoulder. “Don’t psyche yourself out.”

“Far out, okay,” she sighed. “Is Levi done being a total chump?” she asked, but before Petra could answer, Riko turned and asked Levi herself. “Are you done being bogue, man?” 

“ _ No _ ,” Levi came back sarcastically, drawing out the world while he smirked at her.

“Fair enough, I mean, you’re just generally kind of a loser,” she laughed, shoving Levi’s shoulder and shaking her head. He had good enough humor to know she was kidding, which was good, because I’d been worried that he may not have had a capacity for jokes after the events before the game. 

“Well, let’s split you guys,” Marco said, smiling as he gestured towards the painted van. “We’re gonna have to move fast if everybody’s gonna get ready in time. I hope you laid out your clothes and shit beforehand, or I’ll personally pay Levi to beat you up.”

“What if Levi didn’t lay out his clothes?” I asked while we climbed into the car, trying to make us less suspicious looking than we were just ignoring each other.

“Then I’ll pay him money to beat himself up,” Marco grinned in sanguine optimism while he pulled out of the parking lot. The back of the bus had only one bench at the very back, and the bench was more of a couch in that it didn’t have seatbelts, but was still bolted to the floor of the car. 

“Well, then you better have cash and band-aids, Bodt,” he scoffed, sitting on the floor beside me while Petra and Riko stretched out on the bench. Oluo belted himself into the passenger seat and Levi and I pulled cushions to sit on from beneath the back bench. I could certainly see why everybody liked riding in Marco’s car. Everybody had exorbitant amounts of space, and regardless of where you sat, you were comfortable with all of the pillows and blankets he had neatly stored beneath his seats. The front row was separated from the back row by a curtain of blue and green beads and as such, every window was curtained by the same beads. 

“Hey, guys, will one of y’all pass me a coke from the cooler?” Marco asked, gesturing to a small Coleman strapped to the back of his seat with bungee cords. Levi leaned forward and opened the drink filled cooler, passing a dripping bottle of coca cola forward to Marco, but he swung a turn a little too hard.

Levi was flung into me, pushing both of us back up against the wall. We both groaned loudly with the impact, but after untangling from each other and looking ourselves over for injuries, we settled back against the wall beside each other. 

“Oh, right,” Marco snorted, steering much gentler the next turn he took. “Sorry. You two might wanna hold onto something.”

“Mondo,” Levi replied, nodding at the long haired boy while he took hold of Petra’s leg while Marco shook his head at the boy through the rear view mirror. 

“Hey, I’m not gonna be useful if he takes a turn like that again,” Petra giggled, gently kicking her friend’s head with her shin. “Grab onto something more stable,” she suggested with a smile.

“Eh, forget about it,” Levi muttered, folding his arms and leaning into the wall of the bus. I also looked for something to hold onto, but found nothing, and so planted my feet more solidly into the floor of the bus while Marco drove us. “It’s copacetic.”

We arrived at Riko’s house first, and she bolted inside, spending about fifteen minutes inside before running back outside in a dark floral dress that hung just past her knees, with a black gossamer illusion bodice that perfectly accentuated her curves and dark makeup. She wore a black velvet choker with the cameo of a victorian woman hanging from it. Riko’s platinum hair was loose and swished with her when she walked, bending down her back while she climbed into the car.

“Holy shit, Brzenska,” Levi muttered while Oluo cleared his throat at the girl as she sat beside Petra again.

“Yeah, what the fuck? You’re a foxy Mama, ya know,” Petra smiled, patting her friend’s half bare shoulder and smiling at the fact that she was still wearing sneakers. “And the shoes are bomb as hell,” she exclaimed. 

Marco pulled away and drove to the next house on his list. Oluo’s. Ollie ran inside and returned in a dark grey sport coat and slacks. His patterned blue shirt was unbuttoned, and it looked like he had intentionally tousled his hair. “You look good, babe,” Riko pointed out from the back seat, but apart from that he entered the bus again mostly unceremoniously. 

“Don’t worry, man, I still think you’re hot,” Marco laughed while he pulled back out of the driveway.

Then it was Petra’s turn to go into her house, and much to my surprise, Levi followed after her. Both of them left the bus and returned a half an hour later completely changed. Petra’s long, thick hair was woven into an intricate series of knots and braids that made me wonder how she’d gotten ready so quickly. She looked like some kind of Valkyrie the way her shiny silver hair clips and pins protruded from her hair. She had on silver wrist cuffs that matched a glittering choker intricately adorned with jewels made of glass. Her dress was long and loose past the waist. It had bell sleeves and was pure white, save the small silver buttons that split it down the middle. She was breathtaking and all encompassing. Absolutely dressed to the nines.

“Woah, mama!” Riko squealed, her blue eyes the size of saucers while Oluo whistled a quiet catcall from the front seat. 

“Thanks guys!” Petra grinned, truly looking like some kind of goddess. 

“Yeah, you look amazing,” I agreed, finally turning away to look at Levi. I was lucky to have finished talking before I got a good look at him, because as soon as I did, it was all over. Everything that I’d been thinking about was tossed out the window when Levi was rocketed into my view. His jet colored hair was slicked back and he wore a casual suit that matched. His black shirt was tucked into his trousers and from his collar protruded a black bow tie. He looked sharp in the suit that probably fit him a little too well. I was so busy ogling him that it took me longer than it should have to notice that he had small studs in his ears. “Did you have your ears pierced this whole time?” was all I managed to choke out when he sat beside me. 

“Yeah. I did it out of sheer boredom when I was about twelve,” Levi scoffed, folding his arms and reaching one hand up, twirling the earring in his lobe. “I wear ‘em to dances to piss off the chaperones.”

“And it does,  _ every single year _ ,” Marco groaned, shaking his head at Levi. “Man, I swear one of these days, Coach Arnold is gonna tear them outta your ears. And I’ll just say I told you so.”

“Yeah, yeah, let me stick it to the Man in peace, will ya?” Levi sighed, tipping his head backwards against the wall of the bus. 

“Whatever, man,” Marco yawned, turning and driving to my house, where I ran inside and threw on the only suit I owned. It was dark brown and made me look like I was going to a board meeting or to church, but certainly not a school dance. When I pulled on the jacket over my orange shirt, I took a look in the mirror and shook my head. Making a last minute adjustment, I tossed my jacket onto my bed and changed from the orange shirt to a very light blue one. Deciding to just ditch the jacket altogether, I rolled up the sleeves of my shirt above my elbows and tied the obnoxious custard yellow tie. Yanking a comb through my hair and shrugging my striped suspenders on, I decided that I looked good enough, and that I wasn’t trying to impress anybody anyway. I returned to the van, looking like a total fool, but the group was quick to make me feel better about it. 

“You look good, Eren,” Petra smirked, reaching out and ruffling my hair while Marco drove towards the school. 

“Yeah,” Riko nodded, slipping a ball of bubblegum between her teeth. “Kinda dorky, but I’m digging it. What about you, Ollie? What’s your input?”

“I mean, yeah,” Oluo shrugged, while Marco nodded in agreement. 

“What do you think, Levi?” Petra asked, shifting her gaze to the boy in all black who was too busy clenching and unclenching his jaw to immediately notice her speaking to him. “Does he look alright?”

Levi looked me over, his eyes narrowing in appraisal while he reached forward and took the end of my tie between his fingers. While he thoroughly scanned my tie, I looked at his tattoo again, just the very tip of the wings peeking above his collar.

Suddenly, Levi’s grip on my necktie became much tighter, and I felt him pulling me towards him. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” he scoffed, shaking his head while his face froze just inches from mine. “Yeah, Jeager looks fine,” he murmured while we continued driving towards the first dance I’d been to in more than 6 years, about ready to have a stroke. 


	17. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Early because why not?

Arriving at the dance was like stepping into an alternate universe. Excited teenagers were mingling and chatting and taking photographs at the station. Marco led the group of us, while Levi brought up the end of it. Petra suavely paid for the tickets before any of us realized it and could protest, making sure that we were well aware of how much she loved us while we were admitted into the gymnasium, which was decorated with balloons and streamers, with silver confetti lighting up the floor and loud music that played from the sound system. 

My last high school dance had been in 1990, and I could certainly say that while everything was technologically different, the event itself seemed to be very much the same. It was the parents of the awkward hormonal teenagers that I had gone to school with, being awkward hormonal teenagers themselves. There were the same set of students that didn’t quite have the nerve to get onto the dancefloor alone, and the same set of pretty girls vying for Homecoming queen. When I had been in high school, I never gave a second thought to dance royalty, feeling like the very idea of it was patronizing. I laughed at my edgy high school self, with hair to my shoulders and all of my ripped clothing. I would have loved the idea of giving a half-assed handjob to a serial killer, I realized with a snort. My anti-establishment mentality certainly hadn’t wandered far.

“So, who’s dancing first?” Marco asked, smiling kindly at the three of us after Riko and Oluo pulled each other into the onslaught of dancing students. “With Petra, I mean.”

Levi and I looked at each other, and then back at Marco, whose smile only egged on our silence. Both of us let out audible exhales of relief when Petra finally spoke up, making the decision for us. 

“Well, you are technically my date, Marco,” Petra gently reminded him, taking his hand and pressing a chivalrous kiss to the back of it. “So it’s only fair you got the first dance.”

“True enough,” he laughed, wrapping an arm around Petra’s neck and poking her cheek with his index finger. “And you’re a proper bunny in this getup tonight, Ral.”

“Thanks!” She beamed, once again calling to mind Stevie Nicks while her skirt swished and swayed to the rhythm. 

“You could always dance with each other,” Marco suggested, smiling kindly while Levi and I both immediately began to shake our heads at him.

“ _ Ha, ha, _ ” I groaned while Levi continued to shake his head.

“Very funny,” he muttered, mostly drowned out by the sound of the beat.

“I wasn’t kidding, ya know,” Marco said, before pulling Petra into the sea of students. They disappeared from view while Levi and I made our way to the refreshments table, pouring ourselves each a glass of the sugary punch.

“So, uh, how’re you doing?” Levi asked, leaning up against the wall, his eyes avoiding mine yet again while he stared off into the music and lights and crowds of people that tended to get on with the world much better than we seemed to. 

“Ya know, same old, same old. I had fun in shop with you yesterday,” I said, hoping he wasn’t still upset over me accidentally tipping over his toolbox while I thoroughly avoided the conversation that we should have been having.

“If you weren’t such a nuisance, I’d say the same,” he smirked, crossing his legs while he leaned back further into the wall. “You’re so chaotic, ya know that? Going in and knocking shit over, and fucking everything up, but somehow managing to amuse me more than you irritate me. How do you do that?”

“I feel like we aren’t talking about shop class anymore,” I said bluntly, searching his eyes for a response, but they revealed nothing to me, no matter how long I stared. 

“That’s cuz we’re not,” Levi said beneath his breath, almost as though he didn’t even want me to hear it. He just wanted to put it into the universe without any sort of backlash. “You really make it hard to think clearly, Eren. It’s like your lack of brain cells is rubbing off on me or something,” Levi hissed, staring at the floor in front of his feet while I tried to figure out whether that had been a compliment or an insult. 

“Is that a good thing or,” I trailed off, finally voicing my inner dialogue to him. I wanted answers from him, and it seemed like he was closer than ever to giving them to me. 

“It is what it is, Eren,” Levi shrugged, taking a sip of his drink and continuing to avert his gaze from me. “Take it how you want, but I can’t think when you’re wandering around and bumping into everything.”

“Well, I mean, I would say that I feel,” I started to say, but shook my head, cutting off the thought and discarding it. “We can’t do this. Seriously.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Levi snapped, shaking his head while he stared into the masses. “You’re the one that grabbed my dick, Eren.” I had nothing to say to that. There was no excuse for that particular choice of mine, and so was glad when he didn’t let those words linger for too much longer. “Look, I’m gonna go, and we can talk about this later.”

“No,” I whispered, gripping onto his arm and spinning him back around towards me. “We’re gonna talk about this now. I can’t just sit on all this tension, Levi, it’s gonna give me a brain aneurysm.”

“How do you think  _ I _ feel?” Levi snapped, throwing his hands up in frustration. “I never have any idea how far is too far with you, and I’m constantly walking on eggshells.” His eyes flashed with an ire that I hadn’t seen on him before. He was genuinely feeling frustration, and despite feeling bad for frustrating him, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of accomplishment as well. He was opening up enough to be frustrated with me, and that was progress. “Not to mention the fact that we could be  _ killed _ for this kinda thing. People don’t show any mercy ‘round here.” 

“I really am sorry. I don’t know what to tell you, because as bad as I know that it is to say this,” I paused, taking a deep breath and shaking my head, dispelling any dissension from my mind before I spoke again. “I want you, too.” I could feel anxiety fluttering around my stomach. Butterflies with blades for wings were tearing me apart from the inside out while our binary star system threatened to collide again, forcing images of catastrophic fantasy into my mind.

“I’ve never wanted to kiss you so badly, Eren,” Levi whispered, but before I could respond and suggest we take a moment outside, Marco and Petra returned from the dancefloor, smiling and waving as they approached.

“Hey, guys,” I said, throwing a rushed grin onto my face and glancing at Levi, who looked about as horrified as I felt, but he quickly snapped back out of his mortification and put on his facade again. We both had appearances to keep up.

“We were just talking about you guys,” Levi said, forcing a closed mouth smile onto his face and nodding in their direction.

“Oh really? What were ya sayin’?” Petra asked, batting her soft brown eyes in his direction. She was still swaying back and forth to the music, like she was imprisoned by it somehow, and even off of the dancefloor, she still had to swish and bend to the rhythm like a long reed on a lakeshore. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know, you dirty hippie?” Levi harrumphed, drawing his thumb in and out of his clenched fist, moving his fingers along with it. He brought his hand up and gnawed on the tip of his thumb, his grey eyes dark in the dim lighting of the gym.

“Aw, come on,” she groaned stepping closer to Levi and taking hold of him by the seam of his jacket. “Please,” Petra whined, shifting her weight between her hips and pleading with Levi in her eyes. He simply smiled a crooked grin and shook his head at her.

“So, who’s next?” he asked after a moment longer, gesturing between himself and me with his thumb. “Pick quickly; song’s already started.”

“Fine. Eren,” Petra giggled, skipping over to me and taking my hands, pulling me as she stepped backwards onto the dancefloor, already beginning to dance to the horribly romantic Elvis song. My hands settled on her waist and we slowly made our way into a slow box step. Her lips parted when she looked up at me, a soft smile blending into her blissful, relaxed features while her fingertips played with the back of my collar. “ _ For I can’t help _ ,” she whispered along with the song, but I couldn’t look at her any longer when my eyes settled on Levi again, who stood exactly where I’d left him, who seemed to be looking at me, too. “ _ Falling in love with you, _ ” she murmured with a sigh, standing on her toes and wrapping her arms further around the back of my neck, so that she was practically hanging from me, her face pressed into the crook between my neck and my shoulder. I wrapped my arms more securely around her waist in an attempt to take the weight off of her feet, and lift her up a little farther, so that her feet dangled about an inch or two off the ground. 

Levi’s eyes never for a second left mine while I swayed with the ignorant redhead, not willing to make her aware of anything just yet, not even anything as simple as a lack of interest. I wouldn’t, no, I couldn’t blow the perfect opportunity to get some cover for a while. 

“ _ Take my hand, take my whole life, too _ ,” the speakers played, and I hadn’t so much as even blinked while I was imprisoned in those jaded eyes of his. I only looked away when I felt tears welling up in my eyes and a knot growing in my throat. Turning with Petra so that I couldn’t look at him any longer, I continued to rock her to the music, pulling her closer to compensate for the tears I was keeping at bay.

Being with Levi felt so close, but always just out of my reach. Everything I could do to try to achieve it would be in vain, because at the end of the day, he’d still have to wait twenty years before he ever saw me again, and surely he’d be moved on by then. He wouldn’t think twice about the strange boy from back east that had flipped his life on its head. Not to mention the chances of me being thrown in prison. It wasn’t worth the risk, my mind screamed at me. There was nothing that was worth that risk. Not him, not me, not anyone. My only job was supposed to be saving those people, and I certainly couldn’t do that getting all lovey-dovey with the killer. 

I was tossed out of my daze when Marco tapped me on the shoulder, gesturing that he wanted to cut in with Petra. Sniffing and looking up at him, I gave him a small nod while he leaned down and spoke into my ear. “Somebody saw Zeke and his idiots pull up. Figure you and Levi ought’a go out and give ‘em the run around, man.”

“Oh, no way,” I muttered, shaking my head at the idea that the bastard would have the nerve to even be within a mile of Petra, let alone the same room as her. 

“Parking lot. I already told Levi. He’s waiting for you by the southern exit,” Marco murmured, dancing with Petra while he spoke to me. I pressed my lips together and squeezed past the other people on the dance floor, scanning the south end of the gym for Levi, who I found being lectured by one of the chaperones.

“People are gonna think you’re a queer with those earrings, Ackerman,” our P.E. coach said to Levi, a stern expression on his face, but Levi only held a blank gaze with the man, just like he seemed to do with everybody else. “Take those goddamn studs out, boy, before I take them out myself.” 

“You actually can’t make me do anything,” Levi shrugged, turning on his heel and accidentally running into me while I stepped closer to the two of them. Startled, his eyes widened for a second before he resumed his empty, expressionless state of being. 

“You wanna bet on that? I can sure make you leave this dance if I see fit,” the coach asked coldly, crossing his arms at Levi and flicking an eyebrow up at him. The man towered over the shorter boy, probably at least a foot taller than him, though that wasn’t exactly much of a feat. “Look, just because you don’t have a daddy to knock some sense into you doesn’t mean looking like you stem the rose is acceptable in my school.”

I felt uncomfortable, because if I tried to defend Levi, it was likely I would accidentally give us away, but the longer I stood there, the more angry I became at Coach Arnold for speaking to Levi like that. Regardless of where I stood with him, I knew that he didn’t deserve the way he was being treated. He knew it, too, but that fact only seemed to amuse him. Since I had approached, he’d began to grow a smile on his face. It had started out as a small, crooked smirk, but eventually grew into a comedic grin while the chaperone continued to speak. 

“Hey, Levi,” I said finally, thinking it was time to interject. “Marco said that Zeke’s out back, and he wanted us to talk with him,” I said, hoping that I could get away with saying something like that in front of Coach Arnold. It seemed like I could, I realized, when he immediately backed away from Levi and let me steal him away without another word. 

“Yeah, he already told me that,” Levi sighed, dragging his fingers through his hair and turning to look at me. “So, how’d you like the show?” he asked, grinning sardonically when I looked at him, concern probably slapping me so hard, I’d be able to see the handprint for a week.

“The show?” I questioned while he led me out of the gymnasium and down one of the dark hallways towards the back door of the high school. 

“Yeah. He does that at every dance I go to,” Levi shrugged, shaking his head and watching our feet step across the resonant linoleum flooring of the hallway. “It’s gotten to a point where I don’t even remember who started it, me or him,” Levi explained, slowing down and glancing out the window of the back door cautiously, making sure we weren’t about to walk into an ambush. 

“Well, I can’t say I liked him berating you, but I appreciate that you’re willing to tell him “No,” so many times,” I said softly before Levi held up a hand to silence me. 

“We need to get the drop on him, can ya dig?” Levi asked, looking up at me for a moment, resting a clenched fist above his head on the door while he continued peering out of the window. “But I don’t see him. Don’t see his car either,” he muttered, pushing the door open and looking around with me for several minutes. We walked silently through every row of the parking lot before we realized that Zeke actually wasn’t where Marco said he was.

“I’m starting to think that Marco sent us on a wild goose chase,” I whispered, sitting on the curb that dipped into the parking lot while Levi followed suit, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles while he tipped his head skyward. The stars speckled his clear eyes and lit up his high cheekbones in the light of the waning moon. The thin sliver of a moon seemed to cast an eerie glow while the stars rested in the sky beside her.

“But why? Did he want alone time with Petra?” Levi asked, raising an eyebrow at me before shaking his head. “Nah, he wouldn’t.”

“How do you know that?” I asked, genuinely curious about Marco’s motivation for sending us on a fruitless search.

“I don’t. But let’s give him some time in case he did actually want to talk alone with Petra,” Levi murmured, biting his lip and shifting his body away from mine. 

“How do you suggest we pass the time?” I asked, encouraging him, even though I knew I shouldn’t have.

“Fucking hell, just stop me if you have a better idea,” Levi snapped, taking me by the wrist and dragging me around a corner and into the completely dark shop building. Not even the moon managed to shine through the darkly tinted windows. Before I could question it, he whispered, “They always leave this door unlocked in case of emergencies. Personally, I think it’s a stupid idea with all the expensive equipment in here, but what do I know, right?” he snorted while my eyes adjusted to the much darker building. While we stood in charged silence, I wondered if he could hear my heart hammering in my chest, because I certainly could. I could see Levi collapsing before my eyes, and there was nary a single thing I could do to stop him.

“Why did you take me here?” I asked slowly, as though he would panic and rethink his plans if I spoke too fast. 

“So I could do this,” he said, gripping me by the suspenders and backing me into the wall of the shop building. Upon my contact with the metal wall, his lips met mine aggressively, using the weight behind his hips to partially keep me in place. Not that I had any interest in moving away from exactly what I wanted. In the dark, my hands gripped and touched his body, slowly feeling him up until they reached his face and I slowly pushed my fingertips into his hair. His hands found purchase at my waist, and I could feel him restlessly trying to slip them beneath my tucked-in shirt. 

Taking a moment to shrug out of the elastic suspenders, I felt them slap the sides of my thighs as they fell, and I couldn’t help the gasp that escaped my lips at the feeling of it. Levi seemed to notice my response to that, and his hands moved from my waist to my thighs, tightly gripping up the sides of them while my lungs began to threaten me with self destruction. Levi had stopped pulling away for air, and I was beginning to feel it burning through my chest, the sweet flames of breathlessness were chaining me to him, deadbolting his lips on mine, and padlocking his hands on my thighs. Something in the way that he touched them was so dirty, but every nerve in my body screamed “Yes!” at him even after my brain caught up with them. His thumbs pressed the nerves webbing my inner thighs, making them a minefield for him while he continued touching and squeezing up my legs. It was infuriating how every time I tried to set my mind to abstaining from him, I ended up making out with him somewhere, at no fault but my own. 

“Fuck,” I finally was able to breathe against his lips that only seemed to swallow my vocalization while he bowed his back around me, forcing me to arch backwards so that his mouth could seamlessly move from my lips to my neck, just barely grazing his teeth against the sensitive skin there. 

“I wanna do so many disgusting things to you,” Levi whispered against the shell of my ear, finally having thoroughly played with my inner thighs enough to move his hands to my hips.

“Like what?” I breathed, hoping whatever came out of his mouth next didn’t totally ruin the mood. Almost instantly, I felt one of his hands slowly press into my crotch, rubbing his palm against my growing erection. I gasped at the contact, feeling my abdominal muscles constrict, practically recoiling at the calibre of his touch.

“Jesus, Eren, you’re already hard?” he asked between heavy kisses to my neck, using his other hand to brush my hair from my forehead, gently pushing the loose hair behind my ears.

“Just tell me what you wanna do,” I panted while he continued touching me, both of us practically running at a fever pitch, thoroughly embracing each new sensation we were able to present each other with. “And don’t stop what you’re doing.”

“Oh, fuck, well, I wanna go down on you. I wanna feel this in my mouth,” he said, pressing his palm harder into my crotch to make his point. “Your turn,” he whispered, using his other hand to guide one of mine to the growing bulge in his pants. 

“God, Levi,” I gasped while I tried to clear my mind enough to respond to him, but it felt like my brain was overheating at the stimulus he was giving me, cooking in my skull. “Well, it isn’t as crazy as what you just said,” I began, slowly rubbing his hard on over his pants, reveling in the feeling of his labored breaths falling heavily onto my skin. “But I wanna bite that tattoo on your neck. Hard.”

“Yes,” he managed to exhale while his hand faltered on me for a second. “God, please do that.”

“We can’t leave marks on each other,” I reminded him, suddenly despairing all of the things that we’d never have with each other, but quickly pushing it to the back of my mind. We had the time in the garage, and for that I was eternally grateful. We had that moment with each other, and for as long as it lasted, not a single person on the planet could split us apart. 

“I hate that,” he groaned, stepping one of his legs between mine while he removed our hands from each other’s crotches, closing the space between them with one final stride.

“But- but it’s your turn,” I reminded him, feeling my hips automatically push up against his, drinking in the quiet sounds that he let out at the gesture. He nodded into my neck while our bodies only melded together more.

“Ah, shit,” Levi whispered into my ear, his voice hoarse, even with the quiet volume. I felt him press a kiss to the corner of my jaw, swiping his tongue across the space made between his lips. “I wanna be the one you think of when you touch yourself, Eren,” he said, his words melting against my burning skin, liquefying as they teased my nerves. 

“Oh my God,” I gasped, leaning back against the wall breathlessly, before my hands found his jaw again, capturing his lips in an open mouthed kiss. He slipped his tongue into my mouth and I couldn’t help but moan at the sensations my body was experiencing. It was like my senses were heightened, but my brain was numbed. “Oh, fuck, Levi.”

“Yeah? Are you gonna pass your turn back over to me?” he said, chuckling humorlessly into my mouth. “Cuz I don’t think the list of things I’d do to you has a defined end yet.”

“Mhm,” I nodded, wanting him to describe everything to me in graphic detail while our hips rutted up against each other. I could tell that there were certain boundaries that we had set, whether we’d admitted to them or not. It wasn’t that we didn’t actually want to be with each other. It wasn’t anything like that. I could tell the stigmas were getting to us, though. We didn’t want to fully physically commit to each other, in case it damned one, but not the other. We couldn’t even unzip each other’s pants, I realized when both of us completely avoided touching each other’s belts and buttons. While I couldn’t speak for Levi, I could certainly say that I felt a certain level of shame for snapping so badly, and that was what seemed to be holding me back. As it were, I would have gotten off just listening to him tell me what he wanted to do to me.

All of a sudden, I felt Levi’s grips on me loosen, and almost like he’d been smacked, he staggered backwards half a step, still kissing me but working on slowing down, it seemed like. “Eren,” he murmured against my lips. “Eren, please. We can’t do this, you know,” he said, finally pulling back and nodding slowly, but whether it was at me imagining it or completely, I wasn’t entirely certain, as my grip on reality had seemingly been tossed to the wayside. My head was in too much of a fog to do much wondering, anyhow. In vain I reached for him, gently resting my hands on his shoulders, not in an attempt to be imposing, but only in an attempt to remind myself that the world around was in fact reality, and that Levi wouldn’t just float away and leave me to wake up with a boner in my bedroom across town, or even worse, in a random hotel room in Florida.

“Why not?” I exhaled, feeling my heart rattling my ribcage and a buzz tingle through my fingertips like I’d stuck a fork into a toaster. “You were the one that wanted to-”

“I  _ thought _ I wanted to, Eren, but do you know the kind of danger we’d be in if anybody ever found us out?” Levi asked, his features twisted into a face that I could only have described as agony. “I  _ do _ want to,” he said as an afterthought, much quieter than he’d spoken before, shaking his head and rocking on the balls of his feet, like he was heavily deliberating. Finally he seemed to find himself leaning up almost like he was going to kiss me but instead whispering to me about a centimetre shy of my lips. “I have an idea,” he said, and I could feel his breathy mumble tickle my mouth. 

“Oh yeah? What’s your idea?” I asked, suddenly wearing a crooked smirk across my lips, just hardly allowing them to touch his, instead pushing my forehead against him and allowing my hands to dangle now behind his shoulders and the half-step of distance to become a quarter. 

“We make it quick. Now I don’t mean that you and I should do the  _ act _ per se,” he began, cringing at even the mention of such deplorable activities before continuing his explanation. “Because you and I both know the implications of that, both in public and in private. As it is, we both have, ah, situations, that we need taken care of,” he said in a foreign tone of speaking, far too formal to be anything close to what I was used to with him. He was thoroughly uncomfortable, and the way his hands were glued to his sides told me the volumes of things he wasn’t saying. He wasn’t just uncomfortable, he was terrified, which was another emotion I hadn’t seen on him before. “So, here’s the skinny of it: we do the job ourselves. No touching each other below the belt, so to speak. I don’t want either of us even looking down there, alright?”

If anybody could feel both disappointed and relieved in the same stroke, then that man was definitely me. Disappointed because I knew that I would rather have Levi’s hand than my own, but relieved because that meant that I could try to justify the act to myself better than I would have if he’d been the one to get me off. 

“Alright?” he asked again, his strained, shaking voice ringing of a fleeting patience that was diminishing by the second. Before my brain had even thought to respond, I was nodding frantically.

“Alright, yeah. Sure. Whatever we need to do,” I nodded, unwilling to try to meet his eyes.

“And I suppose this won’t happen again,” Levi added, glancing up at me from beneath his thick black eyelashes.

“I suppose not,” I said, shaking my head in agreement. It couldn’t happen again. Not only was it clearly causing Levi an exorbitant amount of undue stress, but I also couldn’t imagine myself spending twenty years of my life behind bars for statutory rape. 

“Okay,” Levi sighed, looking into my eyes and taking a firm hold of the back of my neck. Not allowing his eyes to leave mine, I could hear the zipper of his pants slowly being dragged down. I bit my lip and closed my eyes, the only thing I could do to keep from looking down while my hand absently unzipped my own zipper. Levi snapped his teeth together and took a sharp inhale at what I could only assume was self-stimulus. I pushed my pants midway down my thighs and gasped myself when I felt my hand grip onto the firm shaft of my own cock, and without looking, I started slowly rubbing it in my closed palm, leaning just as much on Levi as he leaned on me, finally meeting our lips in a sloppy kiss to break the tension a little. I immediately felt my lips vibrating, catching one of Levi’s soft moans while his thumb roughly dragged across the top of my spine. The way he was kissing me was a desperate plea for connection, a connection that only I could provide him that night. A connection I hoped he’d be able to find with somebody else once I was gone. 

When he bit down on my lip and sucked it between his teeth, I felt my hand falter in its pace while a shiver shot down my spine like a flare gun at the beginning of a race. His fingers brushed upwards into the beginnings of my hair, which grew longer and looked more unkempt with each week. When my hands did the same, I could feel that Levi’s shave was as clean as ever, cut practically to the skin everywhere but the top of his head, where it hung like a black halo around his face. Even the sound of him breathing made my cock twitch in my hand while I jerked myself off. 

“Fuck, Eren,” Levi whispered, pulling back for a moment to catch his breath before leaning back in for another kiss. “Please, God,” I heard him breathe before our mouths locked together again: an understood prayer between us that this wouldn’t lead to either of our condemnations, but it seemed like the world around us was only trying to damn us further. As we’d been kissing, we hadn’t been paying much mind to the way that our hips were slowly falling towards each other, until they briefly collided, shocking us both into dropping what we’d been holding. Levi was the first to respond beyond the initial shock, locking his eyes on mine, demanding that they not wander south. “Don’t look down, Eren. If you don’t look down, it didn’t happen, and we can walk away from this like it never even happened,” Levi said, forcing an unconvincing calm into his voice while I felt a set of foreign fingers wrap around my hard on. 

“Levi,” I gasped while he went in to kiss me again, but as much as my mind was protesting the concept of his hand on my cock, my hand began to feel around for his. Wrapping my hand around it, I was hardly able to get my fingers to touch while I pushed my hand up to the base. I could feel him implementing a gentle twist in his wrist that was pooling heat at the base of my spine, making me want to feel his hips against mine more than ever. Wrapping my free arm around his waist and keeping it steady through a tight grip on the back of his shirt, I slowly guided our hips together, so that I could feel his hard on pulsing against mine. Backing me into the wall once again, I felt Levi’s hips jerk forward, pushing his dick through my hand. 

“Grab them both, Eren,” Levi gasped, pressing a hasty kiss to the corner of my mouth while my thumb unwrapped from him to accommodate my own erection as well as his within my palm and fingers. Once my hand was secure, I felt Levi push his hips against me, which rubbed his cock against mine. Moving my hips in time with his, I could feel when his dick began to leak precum, providing minimal lubricant as it slipped beneath my fingers. “Holy fuck, that’s nice,” he muttered before his teeth gently grazed the base of my neck. “I wanna fuck you so bad,” he whispered into my skin.

“I know,” I breathed, sucking in as much oxygen as my lungs were willing to give me. “I do, too.”

“You have no idea how bad, Eren. I would spin you around so fast. I’d nail you to this fucking wall if I could,” he said, reaching up and allowing his index finger to trail down my neck, starting at the point of my chin and slowly lowering down the front of my throat until it reached the collar of my shirt.

I could feel him undo my tie and unbutton the top two buttons of my shirt. While his hips rutted against mine, his lips also found a spot just beneath my collarbone, a spot that would not be visible unless I took off my shirt. I let out a breathy moan when I felt his teeth bite down, the suction feeling making me squirm. Considering that he had me against a wall, there was nowhere to squirm unless it was against him, so I could only rock my hips harder into his, rubbing myself off faster against his cock.

“Oh God,” I gasped, feeling the building pressure becoming nearly unbearable, but realizing we’d get our release all over our pants unless we stepped away from each other. So, letting my own shaft go again and pushing Levi’s hips back a little, I tried to make it so that we would minimize the amount of cleanup between the two of us. He was groaning against my chest, reaching down and gripping onto my cock once more and pushing me closer to my climax. When it came, it hit me hard, nearly causing my legs to buckle under the weight of my body while I breathed Levi’s name like it was a kind of prayer.

My entire body was thrown into a state of noodle-legged bliss, but I couldn’t just Levi unattended, and so rather unsuccessfully continued trying to keep pace through my orgasm, getting back up to speed once my mind had cleared a bit. After another minute or two, I could finally feel his swollen length getting ready to release, and his loud moans and ragged breaths against my neck only seemed to make it clearer to me just how close he was.

“Eren, hah- holy fuck,” he panted, pushing his hips into my hand one final time before I could hear his release spatter against the concrete floor, getting on my palm and fingers in the process. Not sure where to wipe my hand off when I pulled away, I started licking each finger clean individually. “What the hell are you doing?” Levi snapped when he’d regained a semblance of reality. “Are you licking my-” he started to say, but cut himself off, shaking his head and turning away. I heard him mutter quiet curses under his breath while he pulled a paper towel from the roll at his workstation. He cleaned himself off, and then passed me one so that I could do the same.

“Thanks,” I said with a gentle sigh while I reached down and wiped myself off, both of us preparing ourselves for reimmersion with the rest of the group. Levi pulled his fingers through his hair and tossed his paper towel into a trash can, tearing off another in order to wipe off the ground. I tucked my shirt back into my pants and tied my tie back up again. Flattening my shirt with my hands, Levi finished redressing himself, giving himself a final once over and turning to me again. 

“When we leave this room, this never happened,” Levi said gravely, packing up the part of himself that, upon retiring, had allowed him to find his release. “Are we clear?”

I nodded, hoping I wouldn’t end up guilting myself into telling Farlan and Isabel. “Crystal,” I muttered, taking a step closer to him and pressing a slow kiss to his warmed cheek. “One for the road?” I laughed, still in a haze after everything that had just happened. 

“Sure,” he scoffed, pressing a much hasiter kiss to my cheek as well. “Thank you, Eren,” he muttered, pulling away and heading quietly for the door.

“For what?” I asked, genuinely unsure what he was referring to, but willing to accept that I had likely done him a sort of favor.

“For indulging me tonight,” Levi murmured, stepping back outside with me into the clear night, both of us touched by the gentle breeze. “Nice weather we’re having,” he said immediately afterwards, stopping to look skyward. I knew he was trying to change the subject, and I was willing to let that evade me for the time being. I knew that the both of us needed to begin compartmentalizing, so that our mind had a space to store that event without driving either of us insane. 

“Yeah, real nice,” I hummed in response while we sauntered our way back to the main building, keeping a safe distance between us. As if any amount of space that rested between our bodies was enough to mask what we had just done. “What are winters like here?” I asked, wondering if the winters were more bearable than the summers to any degree.

“ _ Cold, _ ” Levi replied, his face twisted into a disgusted grimace while he hissed the word out for me. I felt a pang of guilt as the realization struck me that Levi had no escape from the elements. I couldn’t imagine laying in that metal box during a heatwave, or shivering through the coldest nights of the year. 

My heart broke even picturing Levi in that situation, but we were back in the public eye again, so I could only shrug my shoulders and ask, “Do you get by okay?”

Levi responded to my shrug with a shrug of his own, like shrugging was now a new language that we were speaking to one another, as a supplement for all the things we couldn’t say. “It’s fine, I guess. I have blankets. And fire. And I know how to boil water, so my showers aren’t cold.”

“But, like does it snow?” I asked while he pulled the door open and admitted me back inside of the building. 

“Does it look like it snows to you?” he snapped, rolling his eyes at my seemingly inane question, but I had never lived in a climate like the one I was slowly growing accustomed to, so I had no way to know for sure.

“I dunno, probably not,” I said, voicing my simple reply while the vibrations from the music began to pump my veins through the loudspeakers, and just by vibration alone, before we were even close enough to make out any kind of music, I could tell that it was probably a Beatles song. 

“Well that’s your answer then, Einstein,” Levi scoffed while we finally reached the gymnasium again, pulling those doors open as well before stepping into the crowded room, full of loud teenagers, and the smell of hormones and sweat. Upon coming to that realization, I was relieved to feel as though Levi and I wouldn’t look too out of place. I wasn’t sure what Marco expected us to say, now that we were back, so I remained silent until we found him, allowing him to take the lead in the conversation, and to see what I could do from there. 

“Hey guys,” Marco said slowly, allowing himself to lean on Petra while she stood relaxed at his side. I did what I could to analyze the situation, but neither one of them was giving me anything to work with. Both of their faces were serene, and only Marco looked high, so I figured not much had changed in the time we’d been gone, but I was increasingly curious about what he’d spoken with Petra about. “Thanks for taking care of them. I just didn’t want them causing any trouble, ya know?” 

“Uh, yeah,” I said, furrowing my eyebrows and speaking slower than normal, hoping he would interrupt me and say it had been a prank or something. “No problem,” I said, glancing over to Levi to see if he had anything to say.

“Anything for Petra,” he said in a sharp exhale, staring down at his own feet. 

“Thanks, Levi,” Petra said, reaching out to take his hand, and waiting far too long for him to meet her halfway. She awkwardly returned her hand to her side after about fifteen seconds of tense silence, during which Levi refrained from so much as even blinking, let alone reaching out and taking her hand. “It really means a lot,” she sighed, shifting her gaze towards me and giving me a sad looking grin. 

“Hey, um, Marco,” I finally piped up, curiosity finally getting the better of me, forcing me to pull him aside. “Can I ask you a question? Alone?” I said, and because of the near decades it took Marco to process the words, I was afraid my query had fallen on deaf ears. Slowly he began to nod, his body picking up inertia once more while he cast a quick glance at Petra, as if to ask if she’d be alright alone with Levi. She nodded once and Marco led me away.

Once we were at a safe distance, I asked him my question, about as directly as possible without oversharing. “Did you send us on a wild goose chase on purpose or what?” I said, my words harsher and more demanding than I’d intended them to be, but I couldn’t help being upset with him for putting me and Levi in a position like that. 

“I dunno what you’re talking about, man,” Marco sighed, rubbing the back of his neck and looking away from me. Touching his neck was so obviously his tell that I wanted to scream, but I kept my composure and decided to come at it from a different angle.

“What did you talk about with Petra that was so important that you had to make us leave?” I asked, again far too brusquely for the current situation, but I was so inexonerably angry with myself for such a slip up that I was all too keen on taking it out on innocent bystanders.

“Well, I dunno, man,” Marco shrugged, tossing his hair over his shoulders. “Just, like, life and stuff, Man. I can’t get into it, ya know? I promised Petra I wouldn’t say anything, so, ya know, I’m airtight.”

“Are you, now?” I asked, wondering if I could weasel any more answers out of him that evening. “What would it take to get you to tell me why you sent us outside?”

“Nothing, because there was no reason, dude. Just be chill. It’s all groovy. Everything is right in the world right now,” and with that, I felt him rest two hands on my shoulders, falling a little heavier than they would have if he’d been sober. “Do you need me to smoke you out? We can go to the van right now if you need to get jelled,” Marco said, nodding his head along with the words that he spoke.

“No, I’m fine,” I said in quiet exhale, shaking my head and biting my lip to refrain from arguing with him further. 

“You sure? You seem pretty uptight right now, dude. Come out to the van, and you can vent all you want. I’m sure Levi’s got Petra under control for the next few minutes,” Marco pushed, making me wonder if I would get more answers from him if I followed him to his car. I nodded slowly and let him lead me out of the gymnasium once again, half excited to smoke up a little bit, but by far more excited to get some information out of that long haired boy.


	18. Chapter 16

The outside of the school building felt completely different now that I was walking out without Levi. Marco and I ambled slowly towards his van, and he pulled the back door open, splitting the mural apart as he unclicked the door, the creaking of the hinges echoing into the quiet night. 

“After you, man,” Marco nodded, gesturing towards the back row of the bus, pulling out a small pipe from the pocket of his jean jacket and closing the door behind us, instead opting to pop a window open. “I just love the fresh air. The mountains, and the ocean, and the open desert, ya know?” he said suddenly, but it didn’t feel sudden, it felt as though he was supposed to tell me that all along. I nodded at Marco, because I did know. 

“Yeah. It’s really nice to take a breath and feel like you actually have time to breathe it,” I remarked, watching while he filled the pipe with crushed marijuana, flicking his lighter and lighting the bowl. 

“Eren, man, what’s got ya so wigged out?” Marco asked, but something about his voice made it seem to me like it wasn’t a question, like he already knew the answer. 

I had no clue how to respond. Just those simple words were enough to totally baffle me, and render me completely speechless. I opened my mouth to answer him, but no words came, so I lifted my hands in defeat to try to tell him that. 

“Here, hit this,” Marco said, holding his finger down on the carb and pointing the mouthpiece of the pipe towards my lips. If he had known where my lips had been not even an hour prior, I wondered if he’d still have wanted me hitting his pipe. I held up a hand to silently decline, but he insisted. “It’s okay, Eren,” he said quietly, and those three words told me that even if he had known, he wouldn’t have cared. 

My tepid nods were the only response I could summon for him while I wrapped my lips around the mouthpiece, inhaling at Marco’s discretion while he held his thumb over the air hole. Finally, when it felt like my eyes were about to burst from my socket, he removed his thumb from the carb, and let me pull the smoke into my lungs. I choked on the massive hit he’d dealt me, patting my chest to retrieve any oxygen I could manage to inhale. 

“You okay?” he asked, his dark eyes softening when they met mine. He pressed his lips together into a thin smile before I nodded again at him, still incapable of saying anything worth listening to. Anything I could have told him would have been completely unintelligible, or far too much information for my new friend. “What do you wanna do?” he asked once my breathing had assumed a normal pattern once again.

“What?” I spat, like the word itself was somehow unpalatable. Not only did I not understand his question, but I didn’t understand my answer. I figured that maybe if I made him specify, I wouldn’t only think to answer “Levi.”

“What do you wanna do?” he asked again, much slower that time, like repeating it verbatim would increase my comprehension of his words. 

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, hoping that I could get him to rephrase his question if I rephrased mine. I leaned further back into the soft blanket covering the leather bench we sat on, feeling the high as it tipped my head back and pushed my eyelids closed for me. I heard him flick his lighter again, listened to the rhythmic inhale and the three-beat pause while he held the smoke in his lungs before breathing it out and filling the car with the sweet, earthy scent of the plant. 

“Well, everybody’s got something they wanna do before they die. What do you wanna do?” he asked, clasping his hands behind his head and leaning back as well, the bench and blanket seemingly swallowing us whole while we sank further into the seat. 

“I- I-” I tried to say, pondering whether or not there was anything I really wanted to do, whether there was anything I actually lived for anymore. Sure, college had been nice, and law school would ensure financial stability in the years to come, but it wasn’t really something I had dreamed of doing, or even something I took pride in. My entire goal in getting my degrees hadn’t been to achieve some great feat of knowledge, or to climb to some summit of my capability. “I guess there really isn’t anything,” I shrugged, feeling a strong burst of despair colliding with me at the realization that I had no real goals, nothing I really cared about.

“There’s gotta be  _ something _ , man. Like Armstron, and Aldrin, and Collins. They wanted to go to the moon. If you’d’ve asked somebody a hundred years ago if anybody would ever set foot on the moon, they would have laughed in your face, but here it was, televised six years ago for the whole world to watch. Even if it’s something crazy, there’s gotta be something, Eren. I’m not satisfied with your answer, man,” Marco argued, nudging me with his shoulder when he said my name. “How about this? While you’re going, I’ll tell you mine. Do you copy?”

“Yeah,” I nodded, glancing from beneath my eyelids at the long haired boy beside me. 

“I wanna see the castles, the old ones, from when Europe was still young. I wanna ride a gondola through the streets of Venice, and work on a vineyard and live in a little adobe house by all the grapes. That sounds pretty nice to me. I don’t wanna die here, Eren. Not in the states. We’re too wrapped up in fighting other people out here. War with Russia, War with ‘Nam. It seems like the rest of the world is trying to heal, but we’re just picking old scabs over here, ya know? We like living in fear.” He turned and looked at me, and I could feel his conviction. Marco had a way about him that no matter what he could have said, I did know, and I knew he understood me, too. Without even telling him, I knew that he likely knew where I stood with Levi, and his perceptiveness almost alarmed me. Not even Armin seemed to read me as well as Marco did, without even speaking a word on the subject. In my inebriated state of mind, I was convinced he was some kind of psychic, and so asked him point blank the next chance I got.

“Are you, like, telepathic or something?” I asked, and heard an immediate sharp laugh tear from Marco’s throat. He shook his head, his long mane reflecting the moonlight while it moved, half a step behind the motion of his head. 

“I just pay attention,” Marco said quietly, letting out a soft sigh. “I have a good feeling that you’re hiding something really big from everybody, and I think Levi’s got something to do with it.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, trying to tread as carefully as I could, not entirely sure where the conversation would go next.

“Eren, I saw the two of you during the game,” Marco replied, speaking as gently as a mother would speak to a small child while she lulled it to sleep. “I closed my eyes again, and pretended to be asleep so that I wouldn’t call attention to it. I won’t tell anybody, man,” he offered, sitting up and extending his hand, as if asking me to shake it, like shaking hands was a covenant, a wax seal to our spoken contract.

“I- Thanks,” I stuttered, taking his hand and shaking it, looking into his warm, friendly eyes again while I released his hand. 

“I’m gonna ask you again. What’s got you so wigged out, man?” he asked, laying back again and tracing the fabric ceiling of the bus with the tip of his index finger. 

“Just, everything,” I said with a sigh, knowing that despite his offer, there were still novels of things I couldn’t tell him, or tell anyone, for that matter. I didn’t want to be gay. I wished that everything could be the way that it was, before I came to the realization that my lack of taste in women was really just a disguised taste in men. “I hate this so much.”

“Don’t hate it,” Marco said, shaking his head and batting his eyes. “Just keep it quiet, man.”

“But I don’t wanna be this way,” I exclaimed, throwing my hands up in frustration, wondering how Marco had gotten to be so wise so young. “I’ll never be able to be with anybody I wanna be with. It’s illegal!”

“It’s fucked, isn’t it? That a guy can get with a girl before they’re married, and suddenly she’s a whore and he’s cool, and a guy can get with a guy, and then they’re both fags, and anybody good enough to be friends with guys that like guys are fuckin’ fag hags. Same for girls getting with girls. People call em’ dykes without even taking a second to get their names. Labels are stupid, man. Nobody cares about people who are different, and it's really sad, and really cruel.” Marco paused to take a breath, and when I looked over at him, I could see that his eyes were glossed over with tears that he tried to blink back before he spoke again. “I grew up learning about peace, and loving whoever you happen to love, and I was really sheltered for a long time because of the things my parents taught me. It took me a long time to realize that the real world wasn’t really like that. They’re both doing time, now, but they wouldn’t have stood for people treating other people like that.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I murmured, shaking my head and wondering what Marco’s parents had done to get themselves locked up.

“But I mean, just look at Ymir and Krista. They can only openly love each other in the privacy of our house,” Marco said, speaking even quieter than he had been before. It had hardly even occurred to me that they were intimate. I was embarrassed to say that I hadn’t picked up on it at all. 

“They’re,” I trailed off, allowing Marco to finish my sentence for me, watching him nod slowly at the ceiling and the sky waiting behind it.

“Yeah. I only live there to drive suspicion down a little bit, and, you know, because it’s my house, and I like having them around. If people think it’s some kind of weird hippy “free love” thing, they’re more likely to think I’m weird than they are to think those girls are gay. I do it partially because I like living with them, and partially to keep them safe.”

“Does anybody else know?” I asked, looking to him to try to gauge his answer.

“I’m sure some people have figured it out, but only people cool enough to know us that well. To answer your question, though, no, I haven’t told anybody else about it, so you’d better keep it to yourself, man,” Marco said, his voice gaining an uncharacteristic sternness that rattled me a little when I heard it. 

“I promise, you have my word,” I said, lifting my right hand in my pledge to him.

“Good. I’ll keep you two safe, too. I’m not gonna say jack,” Marco promised in return, reaching across the bench and patting my shoulder. 

“Thank you,” I mumbled, wishing that Levi had been there to hear the things Marco was telling me.

“Don’t mention it,” he replied, his soft tone seeming to quiet my mind as the words left his lips, when suddenly it hit me.

“Did you send Levi and I outside on purpose, so that we would have time alone?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow and sitting up again to look at him. 

“Oh,” he laughed, nodding slowly. “Yeah. I just figured with the way you were giving him eyes on the dance floor that you might wanna have a minute or two in private.” His lips spread into a smugly mischievous grin. “Don’t tell Levi. He’ll beat me up.”

“Well, thanks anyway,” I snorted, rolling my eyes at the still-chuckling boy beside me. “And, I won’t.”

“I’m kidding,” Marco giggled, nudging my ribcage with his elbow. “Well, half kidding.”

Marco finished what was left in his pipe and we made our way back into the school building, rushing to meet back up with the group while I contemplated my newfound respect for him. When we stepped back into the gymnasium, I waited by the emptying punch bowl while Marco went to cut back in with Petra. I sat in a small collapsible chair while I waited to see anybody I recognized. Finally, I watched Levi step off the dance floor in a daze and quickly caught his attention by flagging him over with my hand.

“What the hell, Eren? Why’d you and Marco just leave like that?” Levi snapped once we were close enough to speak at a comfortable volume.

“I was trying to get answers from him,” I answered, resisting the urge to reach out and take Levi’s hand while he stood in front of me.

“Oh yeah? Cuz it smells like the only thing you got was high,” Levi sighed, sitting down in a metal folding chair beside the one I sat in.

“Well, I got that, too,” I snorted, reaching over and patting his shoulder, smiling at him while he only shook his head. 

“I know. I just told you that I knew,” Levi muttered, clearly at the end of his patience all of a sudden.

“Are you okay?” I asked, reaching to place my hand on his knee, but withdrawing it before it even made contact with him. I’d remembered we were in public, and I couldn’t just do that kind of thing.

“Are you?” he countered, staring me down with wild eyes, his open hand shaking his fingertips. 

“Touche,” I said with a sigh, staring at nothing in particular, but making a point not to stare at him. 

He let out a quiet huff and crossed his arms, seemingly avoiding me, too. The rest of the dance and the afterparty went by slowly, dragging blades of tension across my skin any time I so much as looked Levi’s direction, draining me of my blood as it bled from my veins. Everybody else seemed to be having a good time, and I was content with my newfound appreciation for Krista and Ymir. Though it was difficult, I certainly tried my best to keep up appearances, but I couldn’t seem to let go of what had happened in the garage, and it seemed like Levi couldn’t quite let it go either. As we were being dropped off, one by one at our homes, my anxiety and my dying pride pushed a blunder of a suggestion from my lips before Levi and Petra left the vehicle:

“Wait, Levi. Why don’t you stay at my place tonight? You said you were gonna help me with the pre-calc homework, remember?”


	19. Chapter 17

It was as though every atom in that bus froze while I anticipated Levi’s response, stopping dead in his making towards the door. I could hardly breathe by the time Levi turned around to respond to me. 

  
“You’re right, I did say I’d help, didn’t I?” he said, exhaling loudly and shaking his head, as though he was resigning himself to the same force that I had already turned myself over to. “Just a second, lemme grab my backpack,” he added, hopping nimbly from the open door, with Petra following closely behind him, practically clinging to him while she stumbled up the driveway. She was set for a wicked hangover the next morning, given all the partying she’d done, given all the partying we’d all done. We were all likely out of commission for the rest of the weekend once the buzz wore off. Levi returned shortly thereafter, steadying himself against the door frame of the bus before climbing in again. Ollie and Riko were dropped off as a pair at Riko’s house, and the rest of the ride completely silent, save for the loud thrumming of the engine of the car. When Marco pulled into my driveway, I let Levi out ahead of me, as Marco’s glance had caught my attention.

“Take care, man,” he said while he nodded, staring past my eyes and directly into my soul. “See you ‘round.”

And with that, there was a quiet comfort that nestled in my chest, at the fact that Marco seemed to be backing us, just as he’d done for Krista and Ymir. I followed after Levi while we walked towards my front door, taking care to walk in a straight line, which seemed to expend more effort than it should have. I let Levi in ahead of me while we entered the house, my heart rate quickening to the point where I almost felt like it would burst. I had no idea what the outcome of the rest of the night would be, but the need to be near Levi was really beginning to cause controversy within the different parts of my psyche. One one hand, he was fated to kill dozens of people over the course of fifteen years, and the idea that I wanted anything to do with him sexually almost made my skin crawl, but on the other hand, there was still an undeniable attraction I felt towards him that I needed to address.

We made our way into the house, startling Farlan and Isabel who were lounging around in the living room, sitting distinctly closer than I’d ever seen them sitting before. 

“Hey, boys! How was the dance? Can I get you anything?” Isabel said, smiling and quickly hopping to her feet. Her expression exuded perfect hospitality, but in her eyes was a stern line of questioning directed at me. 

Levi shrugged his shoulders before I said, “Nah, we’re okay, Aunt Iz. Thanks. Levi was just gonna spend the night so we can work on our pre calc homework together.” 

Isabel’s eyebrow flicked upwards at my suspicious answer, given that I’d already graduated high school, and shouldn’t have needed any kind of study buddy, but she said nothing on the subject, instead gesturing towards the couch before speaking. “Well, Farlan and I can get the couch set up for you, if you wanted to get a head start on that.”

“Sure,” I nodded, turning towards the stairs, but Farlan quickly spoke up.

“Hey, sport, why don’t the two of you work down here for now? Isabel’s got your sheets in the dryer,” he suggested rapidly, nodding at the dining room table while he stood and assisted Isabel in unfolding the couch into a bed. 

“I think that’s a good idea. There’s about a half an hour left on those covers, so I’ll have you come get them when they’re ready,” Isabel agreed, nodding along while Farlan spoke, but before you two get started, I need to have a word with Eren. It’s about Grandpa Wally,” she said, waving me down the hallway and into the garage.

Once the door was closed behind us, and we were completely out of earshot, Isabel began to speak to me in whispers. “When you go back out there, Grandpa Wally is in the hospital, but he lives on the east coast, so we can’t go see him. But, what I really want to say is that I need you to be careful, okay? You know how this looks to us, given everything we’ve talked about, but I’m actually gonna trust you on this, because I figure you hold some respect for this mission. The reason I want you down here for now is because I want to see if I can see any precursors that wouldn’t have occurred to you yet. Other than the taxidermy, I mean,” she said with a quiet chuckle. “You guys can ignore me, I’ll just be reading a book, or the paper or something.”

“No problem,” I nodded, still feeling quite anxious about the idea of being observed, even though I wasn’t the subject of observation.

“Try to get him to talk about something. And the sheets in the dryer wasn’t a lie. I’ll let you go upstairs when they’re out, so long as you promise me you won’t fuck this up for us. I’m serious. This is revolutionary treatment, Eren, and can save hundreds, if not thousands of lives if it ends up working. I need you to make it work. Please.”

“I’m trying, Isabel,” I defended, leaning up against the wall and pushing my fingers through my hair.

“Don’t let your emotions get in the way of this, Eren. I mean it. We can only cover for you for so long, but when it’s happening right in the other room, you know there’s not much we can do about it. If it's so glaringly obvious, and happening right in front of us, how are we supposed to keep that out of the reports to Hanji? The three of us want this to succeed, right? We’re supposed to work as a team, but there has to be honesty, and we have to follow the guidelines as closely as possible to how they were laid out for us. You know that. But, I’ve kept you too long, so look really bummed about Grandpa Wally when I let you go in case anybody asks, and I’ll change your sheets in fifteen minutes, or so. Capische?” 

I could only nod at her, feeling weak at the thought of failing the entire team because I couldn’t keep it in my pants. I didn’t want to be the reason that all those people still ended up dying, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure that either of us liked the feeling of holding ourselves back to such an extreme extent, and the repression of such powerful emotions was hardly healthy.

“Good. See you out there,” Isabel nodded, opening the door for me and letting me back into the house. I made my way to the table and smiled at Levi, who had pulled his textbook from his backpack, and opened it to the correct page. I went upstairs to grab a pencil and a piece of paper before returning to the dining table and sitting beside him, peering over his shoulder at the equations we had to solve. I saw Isabel from the corner of my eye, silently reading a book in the easy chair beside the opened sofa-bed that pristinely awaited Levi.

“So question one,” Levi trailed off, jotting the equation down into his notebook with neat strokes of his pencil. “X equals one over  _ t _ , minus two, and Y equals four  _ t _ plus five. So we have to eliminate the parameters, and write it rectangularly. Jesus,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head at what he’d written down with his pencil.

The fact of the matter was, despite my having actually graduated high school, I had completely forgotten precalculus, and was in no way prepared to solve parametrics in any way, shape, or form. I had no idea what a rectangular equation was, and I was particularly upset that I had to go through it all over again. 

“So, don’t we have to solve for  _ t _ , first? I feel like that’s right,” I mumbled, leaning further over to get a better look at his textbook. It was then that I felt a hand on my knee, gently nudging me away from Levi.

“Too close,” he said under his breath, glancing at me for a split second before gluing his eyes back to his math problem. Nodding infinitesimally, I pulled away from him to the point where I could still see the equation, but wasn’t suspiciously close to him. He removed his hand and exhaled a nearly silent “Better,” before he nodded and said, “Yeah, we have to solve for  _ t _ in one of the equations, and plug our answer into the other one, where  _ t _ belongs.”

“Right, okay. That’s simple enough,” I nodded, scribbling down chicken scratch onto my piece of paper. “So I solved for  _ t  _ on the Y equation by dividing by four and subtracting five from both sides, right?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Levi said, writing down what I had done on my paper, and then solved for y in the x equation faster than I could have even when the material was fresh in my mind. I blinked several times, incredulously trying to process everything he’d just written down on his notebook paper. “So then, we plug X in here and solve, and then the way that you write the finished equations is Y equals thirteen X plus four over X.”

“Wait, what?” I asked, thoroughly confused, but he continued to patiently explain the solutions for me, making sure that each part was blatantly obvious to me by the time our homework was complete. I was certain I would forget everything as soon as he closed the textbook, but let him lecture me nonetheless, as math had never been a strong point of mine. 

Once every question was complete and Isabel had replaced my dry sheets and gone to bed, a tense silence filled the air, to the point where I was struggling to take complete breaths every time I looked at the boy that was seated beside me. We had relocated to the pull out couch once Isabel had retired for the night, seeking more comfort than the stiff chairs at the table had provided. We sat cross-legged, facing each other while the seconds dragged their feet, reluctantly flicking the second-hand on the wall clock that hung perpendicular to us. 

“So, that happened,” Levi muttered, looking up at the clock for a moment, and looking back at me. “But we can officially say it happened yesterday, which is good.”

“Yeah,” I nodded slowly, glancing up at the time as well, to confirm what he’d said. It was just after one, which seemed to flood my system with relief.

“Yeah. I think we’re just gonna have to go at this one day at a time,” he said, keeping his voice so low that I could hardly hear him speak. “Like we’re alcoholics or something,” he added with a snort, though something told me that we were both lying to ourselves at that moment. It wasn’t a question of if we’d come crawling back to each other, but when. Despite that, I still managed to play along with him.

“Hi, I’m Eren, and I’m an Alcoholic. I’ve been sober for-” I started to say, but Levi cut me off with a snide remark.

“Shut up, that isn’t funny,” he said, but the crooked grin that parted his lips told me otherwise. 

“It’s so funny, I’m basically a comedian,” I disputed, shaking my head and rolling my eyes at him for his lack of faith in my sense of humor.

“I’ve been to far too many of those meetings for it to be funny,” he sighed, shaking his head and looking down at his hands.

“Wait, seriously?” I asked, curious as to how he had already gone to AA meetings at seventeen years old.

“I mean, not for  _ me _ , but yeah. When I was little, I used to have to tag along with my mother, but she stopped going when I was around ten,” he replied, reaching over and patting my knee, still not meeting my eyes. “But anyway, we don’t need to talk about that, he exhaled, looking past my head while he spoke, but his voice was quiet and disjointed, like he was focused on something other than talking to me, but when I looked over my shoulder, there was nothing behind me but the kitchen. 

“What is it?” I asked, softening my voice in an attempt to comfort him without touching him, as I was afraid touching him in any way could potentially make it worse.

“I- I feel like there’s so much I need to talk about, but not enough people around to listen. Petra is a really good person, and she’s always willing to listen when I want to talk, but sometimes there are things that I can’t tell anybody.”

“What do you mean you can’t tell anybody?” I asked, hoping to imply that he could come to me with those sorts of things, not only because it was my job, but because whether I liked it or not, I was genuinely attached to him. The human in me couldn’t remain unbiased any longer.

“There’s so much that I can’t say, Eren. Not to you, and not to anybody else either. And it all just makes me so angry I can hardly keep my head on my shoulders sometimes. There’s just so much that isn’t fair, and I wanna make it fair, and it makes me so mad that I can’t. There’s nothing I can do. Not a damn thing,” he sighed, rubbing his temples with his index fingers and resting his chin on his thumbs. “I just don’t like feeling powerless.”

“I get it,” I nodded, stuck in a very similar mindset to the one that he described to me, while at the same time thoroughly fascinated by the analysis of his psyche that I was finally getting a glimpse into. I was so angry that I couldn’t just do something that would change him. I wanted to change his life so drastically that he would never even think to be angry anymore, but there was nothing that I could realistically do other than stay where I was and listen. It was infuriating that the only thing I could do was listen. 

“Nobody gets it, Eren,” he muttered, leaning back into the arm of the couch and once again avoiding my eyes. I realized in that moment that I would never get to tell him how much I got it.

“Levi, there’s a lot of things that I can’t tell you either, but I promise that I understand. Our situations are different, sure, but there’s so much that I feel like I have no power over,” I tried to explain to him, practically forcing him to look at me while I captured his wistful silver eyes in mine. “But I’m here to listen to whatever you feel like you can tell me right now.”

It broke my heart a little to know that I would likely have to tell Isabel and Farlan everything Levi could possibly tell me, and spilling all of his secrets felt wrong, but I knew that that was exactly what I had signed up for. While I waited for his reply, I wondered when everything had gotten so complicated, or when it was ever not complicated.

“I don’t like giving people ammunition,” he sighed, carding the side of his hand through his hair while a soft scowl curled his features. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Hey, no, don’t worry about it. What do you mean by ammunition?” I asked, feeling like I was just on the edge of making some very real progress.

“Well, I just don’t like feeling like people have things they can use against me, unless I have something I can use against them in the case that they throw me under the bus,” Levi said, and I began to realize that his general coldness in personality wasn’t solely the product of a lack of empathy; it was also a fear of trust. 

“Have you had people burn you before?” I asked, and I could tell in the sound of my voice that I was most definitely wearing my heart right on my sleeve. I could see in his eyes that he could see it, too. 

“I- well, I mean- I just-” he started to stutter out, and I figured he was shutting down, and that I wouldn’t get anything more from him that night, but then he composed himself, and continued to speak. “I don’t know. Probably. I mean, I’m seventeen, living in a train car, and my biggest regret is not bringing my sister with me. But I guess it’s probably for the better. I hardly have enough food for me,” he said, and the implications alone were enough for me to piece together a good idea of his turbulent life, even before he left home. “But before I even moved out, I got royally fucked by the United States Draft. They fucking stole my uncle, and never brought him back. And now, it’s just me,” he said, malicious undertones whipping at his inflections while he spoke to me. “And the dead shit I find,” he added with a humorless snort, followed by a stifled yawn.

“That’s not true. You’ve got Petra,” I said, wondering if it was too soon to mention myself on his list of confidants, but decided to push through anyway. “And me.” 

His slow nods were seconds delayed, but eventually picked up speed and looked almost normal. “Right.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“You just did ask me a question,” he said, smirking at me at his own joke.

“Wow. We’ve got a real comedian on our hands,” I scoffed, rolling my eyes at him and returning the playful grin.

“But yeah, you can ask me anything. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer your question, though,” he replied, and I could see him resigning a couple of his defences in preparation for my inquiry. 

“Okay,” I nodded, letting out a sigh, knowing that that was probably one of the only opportunities I would have to ask him something so candidly. “What were you going to tell me the last time you spent the night? When we were in the kitchen.”

“Oh,” he said, and I could practically watch his resolve begin to deflate, like he hadn’t been expecting me to ask that question specifically. “That’s a good question.”

“Do you not remember?” I asked, but he was quick to correct me.

“I remember. I just don’t know that I want to tell you,” he said, lowering his voice even further, to the point that I could hardly hear him again. “I don’t want to scare you off.”

“You’re gonna have to do a lot more than you’re doing to scare me off,” I chuckled, knowing that there wasn’t anything he could do that would scare me off. Even if he genuinely frightened me, I’d still have my job to worry about, and wouldn’t be able to leave until the time was up, regardless. 

“Really?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow at me, his eyes glossed over with what I initially thought was exhaustion, but upon further observation, I realized was some kind of genuine emotion that was practically strangling him. 

“Really,” I assured him, reaching for one of his hands that rested on his bent knee. I took his fingers between mine and tried to convince myself that I was justified in using him the way that I was. “Look, I’m not going anywhere. You can tell me whatever you need to say.”

“Okay, well,” he began, pausing to take a long breath. “You can’t tell Petra I told you, but we’ve never actually had sex. We were going to, at a party, but I couldn’t- I just couldn’t do it. It just felt wrong, and I couldn’t even,” he paused, shaking his head. “You get the idea. Anyway, so I basically had a lot of explaining to do, and she swore that she wouldn’t tell anybody if I let her add me to her body count. And I said yes, and we haven’t talked to her, or to anybody else about it since, but if people ask either one of us, we say it was a one time thing. But that’s what I wanted to tell you before, but I panicked and changed my mind.”

I hadn’t been expecting to hear that. That was one of the only things I hadn’t ended up questioning about him at some point. Murder wasn’t even on his radar yet, if that was his biggest secret, which was a huge relief, and I was thrilled that I wouldn’t end up having to tell Isabel and Farlan about that particular conversation, as it had nothing to do with the case at all. All the information I would have to tell them was positive. He hadn’t snapped yet; there was still hope. 

Taking a moment to compose myself so that my first response to him wasn’t jumping for joy, I formulated a response for him, thinking of more to say completely on the fly. I hadn’t prepared for that conversation in particular, so everything was off the cuff from then on. “That doesn’t make you any scarier than you already were,” I replied with a wink and a halfhearted grin. 

“You don’t think it’s weird that I’m a virgin?” Levi asked softly, taking my breath away with his earnestly angelic expression. 

“God, no,” I said immediately, shaking my head and squeezing his hand. “Not even a little bit. It’s all groovy, man. You totally could’ve fooled me.”

“You sound like you’ve been spending too much time with Marco,” Levi scoffed, shaking his head at me.

“Maybe I have been, but he’s nice enough,” I replied, stretching my legs out and feeling the nerves protest after having been asleep for nearly an hour. 

“Yeah, I like Marco, but normally I wouldn’t be able to stand his type,” Levi snorted. “Too touchy-feely. I don’t have a lot of time for touchy-feely.”

“Why Marco, then?” I asked, looking to see if there was anything more I could learn about him before he walled himself back up.

“Way back when my mom used to work, and before Kenny - that’s my uncle - before Kenny moved to the area, his mom used to babysit me, so we grew up like brothers for a couple of years, there,” he explained, settling into the spot beside me, both of us now facing the television, though nothing played on it. 

“That’s really cool,” I affirmed him, staring ahead of myself before my hospitality hit me in the face with a baseball bat. “Oh! Shit, are you, like, hungry or anything? Or do you need something more comfortable to sleep in?”

“Nah, I have stuff in my backpack. I always have stuff in my backpack in case Petra wants me to stay over,” Levi nodded. “Wanna change and meet back in, like three minutes?”

“Sure, bathroom’s down that hallway,” I agreed, climbing off of the mattress and bolting up the stairs, rushing to get changed and come back before he disappeared. That was my biggest fear at that point, that he suddenly wouldn’t be there when I got back. I threw on a tee shirt and the warm pair of red flannel pyjama bottoms that Isabel had gotten me before darting back down the stairs and accidentally running into Levi when I hit the ground floor.

“Jesus Christ, Eren, watch where the fuck you’re going,” Levi laughed breathlessly, shaking his head of thick dark hair at me. “‘Bout took me out right there.” His teeth glittered in the darkness, and the whites of his eyes seemed to glow while I looked at them, reflecting any source of dim light they could find.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, returning to my spot on the pull out couch while he returned to his. 

“So what’s on TV nowadays?” he asked, and it occurred to me that he likely didn’t get to watch much television, and so turned to a channel that I knew did reruns of  _ The Twilight Zone _ late at night.

“I dunno, but  _ The Twilight Zone _ is usually on CBS this time of night,” I explained, skipping through the channels until I found CBS, happy to hear Rod Serling’s familiar choppy voice narrating over the black and white picture.

“I loved that show. Totally bitchin’,” Levi nodded. “It always found a new way to mess with my head. Have you seen the one where the cowboy guy is about to get hanged by the smokies, and then that guy comes in from the future and saves him?” he asked, and I felt my stomach drop for a moment, until I remembered that it had legitimately been an episode of the show.

Making an awkward sound that seemed to be a mix between a laugh and a cough, I nodded at him, “Yeah, that was crazy. I know the one you’re talking about.”

“And then the cowboy went crazy, remember? Because everything in the future was too loud,” Levi continued, shaking his head at his own statement. “I hadn’t ever thought about that before, that the future would be so loud to people from the past.”

“Yeah, I know, right?” I nodded, trying my hardest not to look nervous, but Levi, in his rare talkative mood, didn’t seem to notice.

“Righteous, I love this one,” he said, gesturing towards the TV, and the quiet buzz of static that cushioned all of the sounds spilling from it. “This is the one with Death, and The Pitch for the Angels,” he said, his lips parted and his eyes wide, like he was suddenly just a boy again, thrilled to see what Rod Serling had for him next. I could practically see the twinkles in his silver eyes as they reflected the broadcast in front of him. I got so lost in looking at him that I had hardly realized how exhausted I was from the day prior. Slowly I got closer to Levi, who remained wholly absorbed by the episodes of his favorite show, until I had fallen asleep sitting up, with my arms wrapped around his waist and my head resting heavy on his shoulder. 

I woke up to his knuckles gently nudging my cheek, and a soft voice murmuring my name into my ear, “Eren, c’mon, wake up, brat. Eren,” he said, not a hint of annoyance in his voice, just the gentle lull used between lovers in the wee hours of the morning, with the grey lit sky of predawn kissing the floor between their closed curtains. When I opened my eyes, I could see that the television was still on, and when I checked the clock, I realized that I had likely only been out for half an hour or so.

“Oh, sorry,” I muttered, blinking the sleep from my eyes once I was awake enough to process everything that was going on around me, and letting out a long yawn while I stretched my arms. 

“If you’re tired, why don’t you go to sleep?” he asked, pointing towards the staircase, but I wasn’t sure I had an answer for him, but as I was tired, my subconscious spoke for me, before my conscious self could formulate an answer for him.

“I don’t wanna wake up and have you not be here,” I murmured into the side of his shoulder, my voice muffled by his cool skin.

“Oh,” he said, pushing a sigh from his lips and shaking his head.

“Levi, if I go to sleep, will you be here when I wake up?” I asked, practically begging him with my widened eyes.

Levi’s eyes shut and he turned away from me for a moment, before I saw him nodding wordlessly, his top row of teeth just barely pushing into his bottom lip. “Yeah,” he whispered after far too long. “Yeah, I’ll be here.”

“Promise?” I asked, leaning over his shoulder and pressing a sleepy kiss to the corner of his jaw, sleep deprivation removing my governors for a moment before I caught myself and pulled away.

“Yeah. Promise.”

“Pinkie promise?” I asked, holding up a closed fist save for my extended pinkie, which he wrapped in his own and shook.

“Pinkie promise, Jeager, Jesus Christ. Go to bed,” he snapped, kissing my forehead and sending me on my way. While I was overjoyed to have at least an eight hour commitment from him, I couldn’t help but wish he were climbing the stairs behind me, ready for us to fall asleep in each other’s arms, but there were some things that were just unrealistic, and the both of us knew better than to push anything more than we already had.


	20. Chapter 18

Morning came the same way it always did, loudly and far too soon, which was something I certainly could have said for past partners I had been with. I shoved a pillow over my face in a vain attempt to block out the sunlight and the obnoxious birdsong that came with the early grey Saturday. I was startled when I peered through my curtains to see a massive thunderhead looming just north of us, but still continued smothering myself with my pillow in an attempt to catch a few more winks. My efforts ceased when I remembered that Levi had stayed over the night before, and I sprang from my bed to check on him. 

Careful not to wake Isabel and Farlan with noisy, lumbering footsteps I walked slowly on the pads of my feet to allow them however much more sleep they could get. I’d had a feeling that Levi would already be awake, which proved to be accurate when I rounded the corner and saw him sitting on the couch-bed, which had been folded back into a couch, watching the morning news on a low volume setting, enough that the quiet murmurs and static were unintelligibly melded together until I had gotten close enough for him to notice my presence.

“Morning,” he whispered, leaning against the back of the couch, his legs akimbo while his eyes followed my sleepy Saturday morning self while I trudged my way to the couch and sat down beside him.

“You stayed,” I replied, enjoying his profile in the soft morning light that just barely illuminated the dark room. 

“I said I was going to, didn’t I?” he replied, unfolding his legs and resting them off the front of the couch.

“Sure, but-” I started to say, but he cut me off, crossing one leg over the other and resting his arm along the back of the couch behind where I was sitting. 

“But you didn’t believe me,” he muttered, leaning forward just barely, so that he could look into my eyes.

“I- It isn’t that I didn’t believe you,” I mumbled, taken aback by his immediately scathing presence, which was especially in stark contrast to the early morning. Upon checking the clock, I saw that it was just after seven in the morning.

“But,” he began, a small, amused looking smirk playing across his smooth lips, “You didn’t believe me,” he concluded, exhaling a quiet snort through his nose. “Now, tell me, Eren, you’re not gonna go around resenting me, are you?”

“Not at all! Of course not!” I exclaimed, a little too loudly, while he slapped a palm over my mouth.

“Shh! You’re gonna wake up your folks,” he whispered, his eyes wide and glancing over at their bedroom door. His hands had moved so quickly to cover my mouth that I hadn’t realized until just then that one of them had taken a hold of the back of my neck, gripping onto parts of my hair so tightly that I nearly gasped when I became aware of it.

When we didn’t hear any movement or signs of life from Farlan and Isabel, he slowly moved his hand from my mouth and patted down the hair he’d disturbed. “Do you not want Farlan and Isabel awake?” I asked as calmly as I could manage given how quickly everything had just happened.

“Not yet,” he said, his voice a hushed murmur that I had to strain my ears to hear. 

“Why not?” I asked, bringing my knees to my chest, but gently resting his hands on them and providing subtle amounts of force, he pushed them back down. 

“Because,” he whispered, keeping his hands on my knees and leaning in, close enough that if I had moved even a centimeter forward, I would have kissed him. “Just because,” he sighed, pulling back again and leaving me thoroughly flustered. “They’re weird,” he muttered several seconds after a response would no longer have been relevant. 

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. They’re weird. They’re so jumpy,” he said, like he wasn’t talking about my aunt and uncle, which he wasn’t, but he didn’t know that. 

“Well, what are your plans for today?” I asked, deciding to change the subject from how odd Farlan and Isabel may or may not have been.

“Well, I dunno, man. Probably just gonna beat the drag with Ollie or something, but knowing Petra and Riko, they’re gonna wanna party down later, so I’ll probably end up getting dragged into that, if Marco doesn’t cart me off somewhere and get me high,” he explained, closing out his statement with a shrug that didn’t ever seem to pair well with his monotonous tone of speaking. 

“Right,” I nodded, noticing his speech slowly becoming more casual, which I couldn’t help but find absolutely endearing.

“So, we talked a lot about me last night,” he began, and I thought he was going to continue, but he waited far too long once again to continue his thought. “Tell me about you.”

“Well, what about me?” I asked, knowing that I had to be careful sharing things with him, as there was a nonzero possibility that I’d accidentally give myself away without even realizing.

“Well, I mean, come on, Eren, I don’t even know when your birthday is,” he said, lifting his hands in a gesture similar to defeat. 

“Well, you haven’t told me yours either,” I responded, hoping my quick remark would snap him out of his head a little. It always seemed like he was functioning with two layers. There was the first layer, that handled all of his interactions with others, and beneath that was whatever seemed to be constantly tormenting him. Some days, both layers worked in tandem, allowing him to process whatever was bothering him simultaneously with the world around him, but other days, like the one that was currently dawning on us, his lower layer seemed to seep through the cracks of his upper layer, and corrupt him until his processing speed was thrown to the wind.

“I asked you first,” he replied bluntly, folding his arms and not expressing anything further.

“Well, I was born on March thirtieth,” I answered, quickly doing the math in case he asked me the year.

“I was born on the twenty-fifth of December, and before you say “Oh! Christmas!”, you can take that comment and shove it right up your ass,” he snapped, shaking his head and staring at the ceiling.

“For the record, that was exactly what I was about to say,” I laughed, nudging his shoulder, still trying to wake him up a little bit from whatever he had going on in his head. I had realized, lying in my bed the night prior, that I needed to take him out of his own head and force him to live in the moment if any of his treatment would work. He couldn’t have any other gears turning; he just needed to enjoy the world around him, which was hard, given the situation he was in.

“I know, that’s why I stopped you,” he scoffed, finally standing from the couch and turning to me. “Come to the kitchen with me. I’m getting water,” he said, and it wasn’t a request, it was a command that my body seemed to respond to before my sleep-clouded brain could. I was following him to the kitchen before I could even process that I had moved. “So, where did you live before you moved out here with your aunt and uncle?” he asked, retrieving a glass from the cabinet and filling it at the tap.

“I lived out East,” I replied, hesitant to give too much detail, once again, fearing something might unintentionally slip.

“Yeah, no shit. We all knew that already, but  _ where _ out East? East is a big place. I wanna know who you were before you decided that gallivanting with a couple of broads in the desert would be a decent way to spend your time,” he pushed, scanning my face with a certain sharpness behind his gaze that made me feel like I was in some kind of hot seat. 

“Well, I dunno. I guess I wasn’t very interesting. My town was big enough that it was easy to blend in, but small enough that nobody would recognize it unless they were from the area,” I said, very careful not to speak in absolutes.

“And then what?” he asked. “Why’d you move out here?”

“Well, my parents died in a car accident, and my aunt and uncle took me in and moved me out here over the summer,” I said, attempting Levi’s stark non chalance, but not actually pulling it off very well. I still missed my parents dearly, even though it had happened nearly seven years before.

“Interesting. Sorry about your parents. That’s tough luck,” he said coldly, reminding me of his unrefined lack of empathy. It wasn’t that he didn’t have any, I began to realize, but he was so screwed up by his suffocating childhood that he hadn’t had any time to even learn it. It was also possible that he likely suffered from not only PTSD, but also the Antisocial Personality Disorder that I had guessed he’d had earlier in our relationship. I knew plenty of people that fell under the “low-empathy” umbrella, but most of them had learned to at least fake it for the benefit of others. This was a skill that Levi did not yet possess, it seemed, but I was certain I could teach it to him.

“Yeah,” I said, deciding to see if I could get a response from him when I said, “I miss them a lot. They were good people.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” he said, tossing a sweeping gesture in my direction while he sipped his water. It was a better response that I had expected, but not quite the one I’d been hoping for, and so was grateful for the nearly two years I would get to shape him a little.

“Thanks,” I said, not accounting for the blush that heated up my face.

“Aw, don’t go getting a big head about it, now,” he sneered, shaking his head slowly in my direction. “Learn how to take a compliment without turning bright red.”

“I think the red had less to do with the compliment and more to do with the person that gave it to me,” I replied, biting my lip and winking at him, hoping to use the heart on my sleeve to my advantage.

“Is that so?” he asked, a snide tone settling in his voice. “Well, remind me to pay you more compliments, then.”

I couldn’t look at him any longer, his looming presence too much for my sensory input to handle at the time being. Even the stiff slouch in his shoulders seemed to work in his favor, not like any kind of relaxed or nervous slouch I’d ever seen. It was a sleekly confident posture, like he knew he had nothing to prove to anybody, and he didn’t.

I began to hum a song, hoping to diffuse whatever situation was hanging just above our heads, taunting us with its irresistible impossibility. It was a song I knew he’d recognize, as I’d only heard it about a hundred times on late night radio. It had apparently come out the year I was born, 1972, and was still dominating during the rerun hours of the night.

I reached into the cabinet, acting like I was busy to try and avoid looking at him. 

“Cause the free wind is blowin’ through your hair,” Levi murmured in time with my humming and I froze, not expecting him to start singing along. I stopped humming, but he continued lulling me with his quiet voice. I felt his arms snake around my waist from behind and I watched him place his empty glass on the counter in front of me. Even after I stopped humming, he continued the song, “And the days surround your daylight there,” he whispered, and I felt his breath fanning my bare neck. “Seasons crying, no despair. Alligator lizards in the air,” he said, before pressing a kiss to the side of my throat. I turned around and saw him smiling at me, almost at my expense, while his arms quickly crossed themselves over his chest. “I love it when you do that.”

“Do what?” I breathed, far past the point of speaking like a normal human being. “I didn’t do anything.”

“That. Right there. See that face you’re making?” Levi chaffed, pointing at my likely stunned expression with his pinkie finger, which protruded from a fist that I knew could be the heavy in more situations in one. 

“No, I can’t see the face I’m making, because there aren’t any mirrors,” I argued, rolling my eyes at him and crossing his arms, mirroring his stance and shifting my weight between either foot.

“Well you’ll have to take my word for it then. You look pretty foxy right about now,” he mused, lifting half of his lip into a crooked smirk while he waited for me to respond, perhaps to see if he could get a rise out of me. It was like a cat and mouse game, and I’d been told by Hanji and Justice Zackly that I was the cat, but in reality, I couldn’t have been more of the mouse if I’d tried. 

“You don’t look so bad yourself,” I grinned, happily indulging his behavior for a moment. 

And so it went for weeks, fleeting touches when nobody was looking, and whispered fantasies when nobody could hear, both of which grew more infrequent as the time passed, with nothing coming even close to what had happened at homecoming. Both of us knew better than that. Farlan and Isabel seemed to relax a little as we hit a lull in our work, giving us time to get to know each other better, as opposed to just working on the case. We had heard from Hanji after another week, explaining more guidelines, and telling me how the time travel aspect worked in a long winded explanation that I caught none of. We sent and received data, but it began to feel like I was at a standstill with Levi. 

It felt like it was just one day after the next of reliving high school in a different time period, and not an active murder case. We hadn’t made any kind of progress in weeks, and Levi seemed as closed off as ever in the weeks approaching the Sadie Hawkins dance. As was custom, it was a girl’s choice dance, and Riko’s choice had already been made months in advance, but I was a little shocked when Petra asked me. 

“Hey, Eren,” she grinned, following after me while I walked home from school. I paused in the middle of a crosswalk until she caught up to me, her short, quick strides struggling to keep up with my longer legs. She and I had gotten closer over the last few weeks, and I was deemed an irreplaceable part of the friend group on Halloween when I’d played Designated Driver for them while they hacked their guts up in full costume. I had had to spend hours at three in the morning, vacuuming out the back row of the station wagon with Petra, who was the most sober at the time, while Levi was passed out on my couch. I had never seen him so wasted before, but something that he was clearly averse to bringing up had happened a few days prior, and he’d drank more than I’d ever seen anybody drink in my life. He didn’t wake up until late in the afternoon, but I’d made sure to keep a close eye on him throughout the day, in case he did manage to arise before then. “How’s it going?” Petra asked, snapping me from my recollective daze. 

“Oh, uh, good,” I replied, flashing her a small smile. Levi had left school during lunch hour, and so I didn’t feel bad about not showing up to the shop after hours. “How about you?”

“I’m pretty good, I’ve- I’ve actually got a question for you,” she said, faltering for a moment as her confident facade was shaken by whatever she was about to say.

“Shoot,” I replied, gesturing to her with one hand while I adjusted the strap of my backpack with the other. 

“Well, you know, we’re all going to Sadie Hawkins as a group, but, I mean, Riko asked Oluo anyway, right?” She said, talking in a way that seemed to only add to her nervousness while she tried to justify it. I had a feeling where this was going, but decided to keep quiet and let her ask. The weather had cooled drastically from the summer, and the nights had a dry bite to them that I hadn’t experienced with the humidity on the East Coast. East Coast winters chilled to the bone, but Western winters had thrashing teeth that clamped to any exposed body part and held you in place until it drew blood. I had gotten bloody noses on a couple of the blusterier mornings, and my lips were so dry that if I was any kind of dehydrated, they would crack any time I opened my mouth. 

“Right,” I replied, careful not to break the healing slices of skin on my lips while I voiced my response. 

“Well, I was wondering, maybe if you wanted to be my date, that’d be bomb as fuck,” she said, quick to ammend herself. “I mean, obviously if you don’t want to, that’s totally-”

“Shh,” I said, cracking a smile, despite my stinging lips. “Of course I’d go to the dance with a bunny like you as my date. You’re an ace chick, Petra. Swear to God,” I added, commending myself for the amount of period slang I had managed to pick up on and was now using to my advantage.

“Oh, aww,” she beamed, pink hues painting her cheeks while she smiled up at me, her fiery hair swishing now just past her hips, and I marveled for a moment at how fast it had grown in the time I’d known her. “Well, right back at ya. You’re pretty far out, yourself, man.”

“Thanks. So, you coming over, or what?” I asked, figuring she was certainly coming over, given how far she’d walked with me, but verifying nonetheless.

“Sure, if you want me to,” she said, shrugging while she continued to have trouble containing her evident excitement. 

“All right,” I replied with a smile, patting her shoulder to try to get her to calm herself a little. “We can order a pizza or something, cuz my folks are working late today. They always work late on Wednesdays now, for whatever reason,” I replied, genuinely curious as to how they both managed to get off of work at such an unreasonable hour for two separate nine-to-fives, but decided to keep my nose out of places it didn’t belong. 

My allowance had stacked up, and now I had a formidable sum of cash at my disposal, so pizza was my forte when it came to treating the stoned, munchies-craving group whenever we went to Marco’s. I had given up on the bicycle, as rides were easy to come by when everybody in our friend group could drive. Even Levi had his license, but had no means of personal transport as of yet, though he claimed that he was nearing the end of his mechanic work on the Harley. Then came cosmetics and registration, which I was secretly stashing money to help him with, and then he’d have an easier way to get to and from town. He had also made a point to express to the group that I would be the first to ride on the back of it, which I thought was absolutely adorable, and I made an equal and opposite point to pull him behind a building and steal a kiss from him in response.

We made it to our destination and I kicked my shoes off when we stepped inside, watching as Petra did the same. We made pitiful attempts at homework before giving up and calling the pizza parlor, who delivered our food right after we’d smoked a joint and were beginning to feel it. We were sure we must have given ourselves away to the poor delivery girl, but she came just in time for the munchies to hit, and so we didn’t pay much mind to it. 

We slipped in and out of consciousness and eventually fell asleep sprawled out on the same couch Levi had kissed me on, quiet television playing in the background while we drifted off for the night, neither of us possessing a care in the world for the time being, despite the double life I was leading, unbeknownst to any of them. In reality, I was well past a double life. Being a fake teenager was one alternate life, but being a gay fake teenager was a whole other one that I needed to take time to address. That night, however, was not the night for that, as Petra and I were sleeping like logs before eight-thirty.


	21. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early because why the fuck not?

The next morning was a rushed blur of classwork before the weekend released the students, only one week remaining before the Sadie Hawkins, and, as was rather customary for Levi, he was practically bristling as the dance drew nearer. As the last bell rang and I began to make my way towards the mechanics shop, I was surprised to see Petra, Oluo, and Riko fall into step beside me.

  
“What’s up guys?” I asked, a little nervous about the sudden assembly of our friend group.

  
“Well, we have a plan for this weekend, and you’re gonna convince Levi to come with us,” Riko said, loudly smacking another piece of gum between her teeth, her voice mildly warped by the size of the gumball while she spoke. 

“Well, what’s the plan?” I asked, slowing down so they could tell me everything before I made it to the side entrance to the shop, as the big doors had been closed when the cold snap hit. 

“Well,” Oluo began, resting his hand on my shoulder, leaning into me as we walked so that he could speak quietly. “There’s supposed to be a meteor shower tonight, so we’re gonna pack up and spend the weekend at the mines between us and Diez Coronas,” he explained.

“The mines?!” I gasped, pulling away to look at him for a moment, to gauge his seriousness, but I was met with the three of their nods. “Isn’t that, like, trespassing?”

“Is this the first time you’re realizing that we don’t exactly mesh well with the law?” Riko snapped, stretching her arms over her head, causing her loose striped sweater to ride up, exposing her soft waist for a moment before she was hit by the cold and dropped her arms quickly to her sides again. 

“Look, supposedly, as the story goes,” Petra said as she tried to pick up the lull in our information exchange. “A long time ago, when these towns were booming in the silver rush of eighteen-fifty-nine, there was a group of miners that was getting ready to go to work one morning, and were waiting for the foreman to show up and instruct them. So, like, one of the miners saw a little girl playing in the mouth of the mine shaft,” she explained, but I wasn’t getting the point of her parable. 

“Sometime today, Petra, you’re boring the poor guy,” Riko snorted, flicking the side of her friend’s head.

“Okay, okay, jeez. I’m getting there,” Petra snapped back, sticking her leg out and causing Riko’s stride to falter as she stepped around Petra’s ankle. “Okay, so the guy went to try to get her out of there, because it was right at the end of the elevator shaft, and it was a long drop. So the girl gets spooked that this big dirty guy is chasing after her, and she trips and falls down the shaft while she’s evading him. Killed on impact. Rumor has it, her ghost haunts the mines still, and if you go out there on a quiet night, either you can see her playing at the entrance of the mine, or you can hear her screaming while she falls down the shaft. Depending on whether she likes you or not.”

“So why tonight, then?” I asked, looking between the three of them, when Oluo spoke up and explained it to me.

“Well, ya know, we just figured, what cooler night to go camp there than during a meteor shower?” he asked with a shrug. 

“And you’re gonna go convince Levi now, so we don’t have to,” Riko said, grinning widely at me. “Don’t psyche him out, man. Go in, get him to come with us, and come back out. We’re leaving in an hour. Petra’ll be by to get you. Capische?”

“Capische,” I nodded, laughing quietly at their antics while I made my way into the shop to retrieve Levi. 

“Hey man,” he said when I got within earshot of his work station. “What’s crackin’?” He didn’t look up from his work, but in the time I’d begun showing up every day, he’d grown accustomed to my presence in a way I couldn’t quite put into words. He didn’t seem exactly comfortable with me, but he was used to me, and making an effort to remain amicable. 

“Not much. Petra and the gang want me to convince you to come to the mines with us tonight. We’re going camping, apparently,” I said, cutting right to the chase in case he needed a ride to his place. Isabel and Farlan both had gotten the day off, which meant that the car would be perfectly available for a short trip out of town.

“That sounds like a terrible idea. Everything’s all rusted over out there. Have you ever had tetanus?” he asked, speaking again when I shook my head in response to his question. “Neither have I. And I don’t plan to get it any time soon, you catch my drift? Lockjaw doesn’t sound like a good way to spend my weekend.”

“They said that you had to come,” I pushed, genuinely intrigued by the idea of going out to the mines, and feeling better about having Levi come with us, as opposed to being left to his own devices for an entire weekend. 

“Why?” he asked, leaning up against his elevated bike and wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his bare arm.

“Because,” I said, stalling while I tried to think of a reason on the fly. “Well, um, as interested as I am in creepy child ghosts, I’d feel better if you came.”   
  


“Aw, c’mon, Eren. Man up, you’ll be alright,” Levi scoffed, shaking his head at my fabricated cowardice. “Don’t be such a scaredy cat.”

“Please. You know, because, I’ll bet Ollie and Riko will share a tent, and Petra will probably want her own,” I suggested, lifting an eyebrow, hoping that he would catch the implications of what I was saying without having to hear me say it explicitly. “It’d be a waste to bring more tents than we need, so, likely, there’ll only be three, right?”

“Are you trying to bribe me, Eren Jeager?” Levi asked, dropping the volume of his voice and taking a step towards me.

“Is it working?” I asked, smiling at him with mock innocence and laughing when he rolled his eyes at me.

“When are we leaving?” he asked, an amused resignation settling into his voice while he let out a short sigh to conclude his response. 

“An hour,” I said, pressing my lips together and watching his microexpressions shift several times before settling back into his iconic blase.

“Well, how do you expect me to get ready in an hour?” Levi asked, shaking his head at the lack of warning I was giving him.

“I can drive you. My folks are off work today, which means the car’s at home,” I said, adjusting my bag over my shoulders as the strap started to wear into my muscle.

“Sounds good. Lemme tighten this up again, real quick, so it doesn’t fuckin’ fall apart or some shit over the weekend,” he said, jogging back to where he’d been working, quickly tightening the bolts back into place, and swinging his backpack over his shoulders, wrapping the sleeves of his shirt around his waist, seemingly settling for whatever warmth his black wife beater could provide him for the walk home. “Let’s go,” he breathed, patting my shoulder while he walked past me and towards the door I’d entered from. 

“Aren’t you gonna be cold?” I asked, lifting a skeptical eyebrow when he opened the door for me. 

“Nah, I’m too hot right now,” he muttered, walking with me past the dwindling pack of students and down the sidewalk towards my house.

“I’ll say,” I scoffed in response once we were far enough away that prying ears wouldn’t catch my remark.

“Don’t start now, brat,” Levi grumbled, his voice half sardonic while he voiced his response. “I’ve got no alley to push you into yet.”

“Who said I’ll let you push me into an alley?” I questioned, raising an eyebrow and doing an intentionally terrible job at hiding the smile on my face. 

“The same guy that just bribed me into going on some shitty camping trip,” Levi chuckled, rubbing his chin and shooting me an unmistakably heated glance. I was taken aback by the way his eyes cut into me, so much so that I found myself tugging on the collar of my shirt and clearing my throat before I could even register moving my hands. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Um, I-” I started to say, but stopped talking when we finally reached a less populated set of buildings, following Levi when he ducked into the dim alley. 

“So, you were saying?” Levi asked, taking a step closer to me. I could feel my pulse quicken, throbbing in my ears as my heart hammered in my chest like a freight train. 

“I just think that this camping trip is gonna be pretty bitchin’,” I said, hoping to settle things a little. We didn’t exactly have time for extraneous activities if we were going to be ready in less than an hour. 

“See, but I don’t know that unless you show me what I’ll be missing if I don’t go,” Levi said, and I wasn’t sure who moved first, but it had been so long since the last lapse in our self control and good judgement that the both of us were practically foaming at the mouth. Our bodies locked together in a fit of universal chaos, and we fell together against the brick wall behind me. Our lips didn’t even touch until I was thoroughly pinned against the wall and Levi had caught a grip of my untrimmed hair. I had started letting it grow out in an attempt to blend better with the trends of the time period, and the longer hair was beginning to grow on me. I was grateful that Levi didn’t seem to mind. “More to grab onto,” was what he said when I asked. 

Despite the hurry we were in, I melted at the feeling of his lips, thoroughly enjoying the few moments we could spare. I gasped when he tugged harder on my hair, which gave him the opportunity to slip his tongue into my mouth for a moment before he pulled back to speak.

“Eren, I’m gonna tell you right now, I’m sucking your dick at the Sadie Hawkins,” Levi muttered against my lips.

I was dumbfounded by the words that had just come out of his mouth, and felt a shiver crawl down my spine when I set my mind to work imagining it. “You are?”

“Did I stutter?” he asked, pressing a final kiss to the side of my jaw before pulling back and stepping away from me.

“Are you sure?” I asked, looking at him while obvious disbelief sank into my words.

“Eren, I don’t think I’ve ever been more sure about anything in my life. Unless you don’t want me to,” he trailed off, waiting for my response and looking up at me while we continued down the road to my house. 

I was at a sort of a mental crossroads while I rapidly tried to come up with a response. On one hand, I absolutely wanted him to, but on the other hand, I was sure that the judge would laugh in my face if my only defense for that particular act was that, “he wanted to,” and so my response came as a shock to the both of us when I said, “Only if you let me suck yours.”

Levi coughed quietly while he tried to mask his surprise, but nodded quickly while he tried to formulate an answer. “Yeah, sure,” he said, his eyes wide while they regarded me, and I was a little selfishly excited that I’d managed to startle him with that.

“Good,” I nodded, folding my arms and nodding, feeling a little self satisfied that I was managing to crack him a little further. 

We made it to my house and I found Farlan and Isabel passed out on top of each other on the plaid couch in the living room, evidently from day drinking, it seemed after finding a mostly empty bottle of whiskey and empty coca cola bottles neatly arranged on the coffee table. I wondered what had happened to make them want to get so wasted, but figured it was nothing we could talk about in the presence of Levi, so I let them lie. I ushered Levi quietly into the garage, taking the car keys from the mounted hook and we sped out of the driveway and down the road. 

“Levi, I have a question for you,” I said abruptly, startling myself with my sudden need to understand an aspect of him that could not only help the case move along, but also help me as well.

“Go ahead,” he muttered, fixing his eyes on the road and tensing, almost like he was bracing for impact.

“Why me?” I asked plainly, knowing the implications that my words held without having to be explicit about our relationship, whatever it may have been.

“What do you mean?” he asked strategically. I could tell he understood the question, but wanted to get more information so that he could try to feel me out a little better. 

“I mean, out of everybody in town, and all these kids you grew up with, why pick the new kid from across the country that you don’t have much in common with at all.” I skeptically handed more obscure information over to him, hoping he would bite that time.

Pausing and reviewing his options for response, I could practically see the gears turning as he tried to fabricate the best answer to feed me. “Well,” he said, letting out a long sigh, shaking his head infinitesimally, almost to tell himself off while he quickly changed course. “Can we talk about this later? That would sort of force me to explain some things that I’m not ready to explain yet.”

“Well, you don’t have to give me the whole explanation. A short answer will suffice,” I laughed, a little nervous that he didn’t just open up and tell me.

“It’s this next turn,” Levi instructed casually. “And I don’t think I want to tell you,” he said slowly, nearly ripping the rug from beneath my feet. The tone of his voice had sent chills down my spine and I shifted the car into first gear while I slowed for the turn, happy to have some room to breathe; the speed had been nearly suffocating, given the subject matter. I had never felt more alone with him than I did that moment. 

“Why not?” I asked, hoping he would tolerate my pushiness just to get a final question answered.

“Because, I just think that it’s one of the more morally ambiguous ways to fall for somebody, and I wouldn’t like to dwell on it,” he said with the sharp formality that he seemed to use when he was uncomfortable with something.

“So, there are feelings involved, then?” I asked, parking the car in front of his shelter, and turning to the boy in the passenger seat.

“If you could call them that, then yeah,” he said, nodding slowly at me, with a fixed expression of his face, like he was trying to think of something else to say, but settled for silence, which he broke as he suddenly began scrambling to get out of the car. “Wait here. I’ll get my shit. Don’t leave, okay? I’ll be out in a second. If you go anywhere, I swear to God, I’ll track you down.” 

“I’m not going anywhere,” I replied softly while he disappeared into the box car, only to return about ten minutes later with a small cloth bag slung over his shoulder, but he was holding the bag by the strap, which upon closer inspection, I could see was broken. 

“Stupid thing tore when I picked it up. Had to repack the entire goddamn thing,” he groaned, climbing into the passenger seat and patting the roof of the car through the open window. He tied the two ends of the strap together while I turned onto the main road once more, driving back towards town. 

“If you need a new bag, I can spot you,” I answered, pushing my hair back with my fingertips.

“Don’t worry about it,” Levi muttered, shaking his head. “It isn’t anything I can’t mend. I have squares of denim lying around from an old pair of pants.”

“Whatever you say,” I sighed, shaking my head and continuing to drive towards home. By the time I got there, Petra’s car was already parked in the driveway, and I could see her fiery mop of hair and two white arms lifted and covering her face while she lit a joint. I pulled in next to her in the driveway, honking my horn to notify her of my presence. 

Putting the car in park, I cut the engine and we both disembarked from the vehicle. “Hey, kid,” Levi muttered when Petra left her car, concealing her joint from the street view by holding it right at her side. 

“Hey, you guys ready?” she asked, but I shook my head.

“Almost. I just gotta get my stuff together and let my aunt know that I’ll be gone this weekend,” I informed the redhead who nodded silently while I turned towards the house. 

  
“I can, uh, give you a hand if you need,” Levi said quietly, and I gestured for him to follow me inside once I had gotten the door open, if only to get a couple more minutes with him before I’d have to keep my distance for an entire weekend. We crept into the house, stepping quietly up the stairs after I’d returned the car keys to the hook, and when we made it to my bedroom, Levi paused in the doorway behind me. “So this is your room, huh?” he confirmed, even though we both knew what the answer to his question would be. 

“Yep,” I nodded, avoiding eye contact with him, though I wasn’t sure why.

“Right on,” he replied, letting out a sigh and sauntering over towards my bed. “Do you mind?” he asked, only sitting down after I voiced a quiet confirmation that I did not, in fact, mind.

I tore through my drawers, shoving random clothing into my backpack, which I had emptied out onto the desk only seconds prior. I had shirts and pants for the trip, but I was pacing the room, panic setting in while I began to hyperfixate on everything I could possibly need. I was so busy working on the case, and then actively working with Levi that I hadn’t taken a single second to breathe all week, and apparently that was starting to weigh on me. Levi took notice as well, but I didn’t realize until he caught hold of one of my arms while I paced past him.

“Hey,” he murmured, taking me by my hips and looking up at me while he pulled me so that I was standing between his legs. “Hey, calm down a little. You’re psychin’ yourself out. C’mere,” he said while he gently guided me forward so that I was straddling his waist on the edge of my bed. I was taken aback entirely by the sudden softness of the moment we were sharing, the nearly nurturing attitude he’d adopted. “What do you need right now?”

“A hug,” I muttered, not having been the touchiest guy before, but for one reason or another, Levi had a way of bringing it out in me.

“I hate hugs. They’re so intimate. More intimate than kissing,” Levi said, as he proceeded to wrap his arms around my waist, pulling me flush against his chest. “How’s that?”

“Pretty good, for somebody that hates hugs,” I snorted, wishing I could kiss him, but with Farlan and Isabel so close downstairs, I knew it was a bad idea. Hugging the way we were was bad enough, I decided, brushing the hair from his face while it rested on my collarbone.

“Well, I would hope so,” he chuckled in response, his voice vibrating against my body. My fingers moved to trace the column of his spine at the back of his neck. “I really-” he started to say, before exhaling and changing his mind. “Well, nevermind.” 

Those “Neverminds” were all I had of him that I could cling to, the promise of intimacy that was thoroughly overshadowed by what was just so. I grasped desperately to that word every time he spoke it, and even though it wasn’t much, I was grateful for where I stood with him, and what we had. “Nevermind” was the promise of something, despite what he felt like he couldn’t say. “Nevermind” was good enough for me.


	22. Chapter 20

The drive out to the mines was something of an ominous trip, and the rows of chain link fence stood before us like impending doom while we parked beside Oluo’s truck, in a shallow ravine, out of sight of the road before we decided to start into the private property. There was a loose segment of the older parts of the fence that Oluo was able to lift far enough for us to crawl beneath, shoving our bags and tents in ahead of us. The afternoon sun was sinking low in the sky, just barely kissing the peaks of the mountains to the west while we hiked towards the ruins of the old silver mine. 

“This place is kinda creepy,” Riko muttered as we crested the hill that led down towards the dilapidated buildings, giving us our first glance into the rotted and rusty equipment where we would be setting up our camp. 

“Exactly,” Oluo snickered, nudging her with his elbow while we closed in on a good place to set up our things. “Here works, and I’ve only got two tents, so, I’m hoping at least one of you brought another one,” he said, dropping two long, narrow bags, which presumably held the tents. 

“I brought mine, but it’s a backpacking tent, so it only sleeps one, which is pretty bogue when there’s more than one person that needs a tent, ya know,” Petra said, but Oluo resolved that issue before I could even think of something to say.

“Well, that’s fine. Riko and I can share, and then Eren and Levi can have the other one,” he said, completely unaware of what he’d just set us up for. “You two can have the bigger one, because Riko and I don’t need much space,” he offered, tossing the longer of the two bags to Levi, who caught it silently, nodding at Oluo while he spoke, dragging hands through his shaggy, ash blonde hair now that the brief hike had finally come to an end and he could put his things down. 

Riko dropped a cooler and her backpack on a rather imposing boulder, while Oluo and Petra went to scout out a prime spot for tents, clearing out tumbleweeds and small rocks to further flatten the terrain around them, while Levi and I were caught in a bit of a staring competition with one another, neither of us certain who should move first. 

“So, uh,” I said, finally breaking the silence, eyeing the green tent bag that rested in his hands. “Let’s get to it.”

“Yeah,” Levi nodded in response, his eyes instantly scanning the area around us, looking for a clear enough place for our tent. “Over here,” he said, pointing to a mostly empty place where the ground looked flat enough that we could each sleep comfortably without too much effort. 

I got down to my knees and helped him clear the rocks from the area, luckily, as the place was just as much of a desert as the surrounding biome was, deeply rooted plants were few and far between, so the clearing process only took us a minute or two before we removed the tent from the bag and began to assemble it, sticking poles together and hammering stakes in until we had a lovely nylon home for the weekend completely set up and ready to be moved into. We threw our backpacks in, as well as the sleeping bags I’d managed to find in my garage before we heard chattering of the others approaching from behind. 

“Why’re you putting your rain fly on?” Petra asked from behind us, and at first I thought she had been talking to us, but then turned and saw her talking to Riko and Oluo. “Isn’t the point to actually  _ see _ the meteor shower?”

“Well, sure, but we’re gonna do that as a group; we don’t need to have our tents open to the world,” Oluo responded, glancing at Petra’s uncovered tent, the rain fly folded neatly inside of her little room.

“Well, I mean we’re out in the middle of nowhere, what have you got to hide that’s more important than looking at the stars?” Petra smirked, knowing exactly how to get a rise out of the now red-eared boy standing in front of her. 

“What’s so weird about having a rain fly? They put theirs on, too,” he said, gesturing towards Levi and me, both of us immediately raising our hands in defense.

“Hey, don’t bring us into your weird intimacy talks. We’re not involved in this,” Levi laughed, crossing his arms while I heard the nervousness in his quiet snickering. 

“Yeah, seriously. We’re not the ones you gotta worry about here,” I lied through my teeth, knowing full well that we were the ones that they should have been  _ most _ worried about.

“And Petra,” Levi snapped, turning to her with an smug smirk on his face. “Quit micromanaging everybody. If you wanna sleep without your rainfly, fine, but don’t come crying to us when some shitty ghosts come and scare you.”

“Oh, stick a sock in it,” Petra snorted, shrugging as she continued filling her tent with bags.

“Have you guys ever done this before?” I asked, turning towards the rest of the group, and smiling as Riko nodded.

“Sure, we went up here a few months ago to skip out on summer school for a few days. All of us had summer school, which none of us passed, so we were all held back,” Riko shrugged.

“What’d you have to do summer school for?” I asked, sitting on the boulder and taking a drink of water from the flask Levi had pulled from his backpack and passed to me. 

“Oh, jeez, what  _ didn’t _ we have summer school for?” Riko said with a snort. “Basically we had the bombest school year ever, and the principal’s idea of bomb was totally different from ours.”

“How so?” I scoffed, eyeing Levi while he sat beside me and took his water back.

“Well, apparently skipping thirty consecutive days of school to go on a road trip is not the brightest idea. Also we got caught smoking during lunch more than once,” she explained, shrugging her shoulders and wrapping an arm around her boyfriend’s waist, their touching bodies casting long shadows into the center of our self proclaimed campsite while the sun sank lower behind the hills. 

“Well, that’ll do it. Where’d you go on your road trip?” I asked, wondering what would constitute missing an entire month of school.

“Well, initially,” Riko said, pausing to laugh at what she was about to tell me. “We were gonna go to the Grand Canyon,” she said, giggling while she tried to continue talking, but Petra piped up and spoke over whatever she had wanted to say.

  
“We did go to the Grand Canyon, but we got a little side tracked, and a week later we wound up in Vegas. There were some bars and casinos that took our word when we said we were legal,” she explained.

“Took you word for it,” Levi snorted. “It only worked because you tracked down the manager and offered him a blowjob. Any idiots coulda told we were minors,” he huffed, shaking his head at the ginger that now stood beside him, softly punching his bicep, which was flexed due to how rigidly his arms were folded together.

“I didn’t give him a blowjob, I just offered him one,” Petra shrugged, assuming that absolved her of any wrongdoing.

“Oh whatever,” Riko snorted. “We gonna go look at some old shit or what?”

“Sure, after you,” Oluo gestured, the rest of us following Riko as she began to lead us the rest of the way to the mine structures, one of which was a looming tower, with a rotten wooden staircase winding its way up the outside of the beams. 

“What’s up there?” I asked, pointing towards the small shelter resting atop the old tower, metal and brittle wood the only thing keeping the building from toppling down to the ground. 

“I dunno. We didn’t go up there. The staircase is broken,” Ollie shrugged, while Riko seemed to adopt a devious glint in her seafoam eyes.

“One of us could always climb it,” she suggested. “Levi, care to go up and tell us what’s up there? Maybe we’ll find a body.”

“I strongly doubt that. And why me?” Levi replied, eyeing the top of the tower, as though he was gauging how to best climb up the overlapping beams that held it up. 

“Well, because, you like it when you can gamble for things,” she replied. “And I’ll give you the rest of my cigarettes if you make it to the top. If you don’t, you have to give me the rest of yours.”

“Why do I have to do it? Jaeger’s the one that wants to know so bad, why doesn’t he go up?” Levi argued, but I could tell the idea of scaling something like that was a more than thrilling concept to him. He seemed to like the idea of it, only arguing with Riko for the sake of doing so. 

“Well, I mean, you two could always race. Since he doesn’t just have cigarettes lying around, if Eren loses, he has to buy you and me a whole new pack,” she said, lifting her eyebrows while she raised the stakes. I was intrigued by the aspect of climbing the thing as well, so kept my mouth shut, and allowed myself to be brought into it.

“Eren? Input?” Petra asked after a moment of silence. 

“Sure. May the best man win,” I smirked, dusting my hands off on my jeans while Levi did the same, exhaling a sharp breath through his nose in his amusement. 

  
“You’re on, brat,” Levi grinned, grabbing onto the first beam that he felt he could hoist himself up onto while I did the same beside him. 

“Okay, on my count o’ three,” Oluo said, lifting his hand, a wide grin plastered to his expression while he counted us down. “One, two, three!” he exclaimed and we were off, climbing recklessly up the side of the old tower, both of us keeping good time with one another, until we reached the midway point, about thirty feet into the air, when I began to slow down. 

Realizing that Levi was in far better shape than I was, I continued to fall behind. He had almost completely passed me when I jumped to another beam to pull myself up onto, but much to my shock, the plank had completely rotted through, and snapped off in my hand before I even realized I was falling. The last thing I heard was Petra scream, “Oh my God!” before I felt Levi’s hand slam against my wrist while his fingers wrapped around it, dangling me nearly forty feet in the air. I realized that it was likely certain death if he dropped me, whether he did so willingly or not, and now my life literally rested in his hands.

I looked up to him, as the jolt of his hand catching me shook him a little, but he still maintained a strong grip on the tower, his legs bent as they caught most of the shock that my falling body had provided. Levi’s eyes met mine for a moment before he muttered, “I can’t hold you all day,” pushing me back into the reality that I was still hanging much too far above the ground for anybody’s comfort. I grabbed onto a beam to his right, on the opposite side to the one I’d been climbing before. “You got it?” he asked, looking down at me to make sure I was securely on the side of the tower before he let me go. I nodded and heard whoops and hollers from the ground below.

“Whoo! Go Eren!” Petra shouted, cupping her hands on either side of her mouth to amplify her voice.

“Yeah! You didn’t die!” Riko exclaimed, laughing nervously at the recently averted crisis.

“And who do we thank for that?” Levi shouted back at them, laughing while he continued climbing, looking down at me over his shoulder to make sure I was keeping up with him. When he saw that I had slowed down considerably, now hyper aware of my surroundings, and just how far I had to fall before I died, he climbed back down to me and patted me on the back. “You gonna make it up okay?” he asked, keeping pace with me while I slowly continued climbing towards the top.

“I mean, we’ve made it more than halfway. No use turning back now,” I said, my voice shaky while I tried to regain my confidence. 

“Well, if you’d rather go back down, we can do that,” he offered, but I shook my head, declining and climbing onto the next beam that awaited me, slowly putting my weight onto it to make sure it wouldn’t fall out from under me, before I pulled myself up. Moving much slower, due to my heightened caution, we finally reached the top just as the sun sank beneath the horizon, leaving us with a dusty purple sky that was smeared with wispy pink clouds. 

“Wow,” I murmured, looking out over the sprawling desert, laid out so pristinely beneath us that it was hard to believe I wasn’t looking at a painting. 

“Yeah, really,” Levi replied, speaking in equally quiet tones while we waved and smiled at the rest of our group who watched us from below. After a moment of silence, Levi spoke again, directing us towards the small room on the top of the tower we’d just climbed. “Well, we made it all the way up here. Let’s go see if there’s a body for Riko,” he snorted, pushing the door, but it wouldn’t budge. 

“Is it not opening?” I asked, but Levi held up a finger.

“Hold on. I’m gonna see what’s in this damn tower,” he said. “Hold my shoulders so I don’t fall backwards,” he instructed, eyeing the long drop that was only about two feet behind us, neither one of us trusting the creaky railing much. I did as I was told, taking a hold of Levi’s shoulders, while he delivered a powerful kick to the doorknob, breaking it from the rest of the door while I struggled to keep my balance from the recoil of his blow. Once we had regained our stability, we turned to the door, which now swung open without a problem.

“Well, I didn’t know you could improvise so well,” I chortled while he gestured towards me and then towards the open doorway.

“And I didn’t know you looked so nice covered in desert dust and sweat, so it looks like we’re both learning things today,” he said quietly while I stepped into the dim, dust filled room.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I nodded scanning the shack for anything of interest. It looked like it had at one point been some sort of foreman’s office, but why it was at such a vantage point, I couldn’t explain. The glass had begun to pool towards the bottoms of the window panes, but remained untouched, only slight discoloration to show for the years it had sat abandoned. There was a rather large wooden desk pushed up against the southern wall, with a rotting leather chair that Levi was closely examining by the time he responded to my remark.

“Good. I meant it as one,” he said, narrowing his eyes while they focused on something sticking out of the grimy desk chair. Looping his finger through an eyelet, he pulled a brass key from the dusty upholstery, raising an eyebrow at me while he held it up so that I could see it. 

“Interesting,” I mused, now wondering if there was a lock that the key would go to.

“Well, don’t just stand there, look for somewhere I can stick this,” Levi instructed, his choice of words giving me the perfect opportunity to give him a hard time.

“I can tell you where you can stick that,” I scoffed, shaking my head while I stepped around the little room, tapping my feet each time I took a step, checking for loose floorboards, not that I imagined there would be any, more than sixty feet off the ground. 

“I- I don’t have anything to say to that,” Levi muttered, like something about his lack of response was compelling enough to draw annoyance into his bloodstream.”Sometimes I can’t think of the right thing to say fast enough.”

“What are you talking about, man?” I asked, sitting on the corner of the sturdy wooden desk, raising an eyebrow quizzically to emphasize my confusion for him. “I haven’t ever noticed that,” I shrugged.

“Yeah, but sometimes, if I haven’t ever conceptualized a situation before, I don’t know how to respond to it,” he said, in a way that almost felt like shame was seeping into his voice, and I was immediately bewildered, in very much the same situation as him, with no idea how to move forward. 

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, and Levi shrugged his shoulders, stepping closer to me while he twirled the loop of the old ring around his fingers. 

“Well, if you think about it, everybody you talk to is pretty much the same fundamentally. Yeah, there are some outliers here and there, but generally, I mean, it’s pretty easy. When somebody’s happy, you try to be happy, too. When somebody’s sad, you try and make them happy again. Keeping that rule of thumb in mind, that makes it very easy to move through conversations, and such, but when I’ve never been in a situation where whatever it is I’m feeling right now has been expressed, I don’t have any idea what to say to you,” Levi explained, and without letting my inner psychology student come out and try to diagnose him, that could be done later, I allowed myself to completely understand him. 

Immediately, I could wrap my head entirely around the disconnect that he was experiencing, as I was experiencing nearly the same one, which was more than a little strange to me, considering I’d never seen myself as particularly socially inept. With that strange tug in my chest, I closed that stream of thought up and saved self-analysis for another time. “It’s alright, Levi, I’m kinda in the same boat, here,” I managed to say before Levi pulled a cigarette from the pocket of his pants, lighting it in what I assumed was an incredibly flammable little room. “Is that such a good idea?” I asked, happy to have a reason to change the subject, as it was bordering on a conversation that I wasn’t ready to have. Not with Levi, and certainly not with myself. 

“I’ll put it out when I’m done. I’m no Smokie, but I know that leaving shit smoldering in a house made of matchsticks is not the wisest move,” Levi hummed, the sound of his voice pushing around the white obstruction that rested between his lips. “Now where is the damn lock?” he asked aloud, though it sounded like he was only talking to himself. He began to pull open drawers of the desk before stopping and freezing. “Look here,” he muttered, pointing at a small, discreetly placed lock at the bottom of one of the drawers.

“Why would somebody put a lock at the bottom of a drawer?” I asked, bewildered at the concept of doing something so stupid.

“Because that’s not the bottom of the drawer. My uncle had a false bottom in the drawer of his desk, but he didn’t keep anything in there but cigars,” he explained, knocking on the hollow base of the drawer, sticking the key into the lock, looking at me for confirmation to turn it. 

“Let’s hope we find something more interesting than cigars, then, huh?” I said, smirking while he stared intently at the key, now sticking out of the lock, just betting to be turned.

“Speak for yourself. I’ll bet cigars would probably be the coolest thing we’d find. This place has been picked clean,” he said quietly, finally twisting the key in the lock until a dull, but still audible click echoed through the small, quiet room. 

Pulling the false bottom out of the drawer, we saw an incredibly perplexing arrangement of contents. There was a full brown vial marked with a label that said  _ Rat Poison _ in a ubiquitously haunting red ink, a folded, sealed envelope, and perhaps the most perplexing of all, a steel grey revolver with a finished wooden grip.

“What the fuck?” I murmured, musing as I wondered what those items could possibly have to do with each other, and Levi quickly reached for the envelope, breaking the seal and pulling out a handwritten letter. Reading the old shorthand aloud, Levi and I quickly began to realize what the secret drawer we found had been all about. 

“To the finder of this letter,” Levi read, his eyes narrowing as they tried to decipher the nearly unintelligible handwriting. “If you have come across this letter, you have likely come across it beside my corpse, no longer in the plane of this sickening world, where wealthy fiends come through and deprive the common man of the hard earned fruits of his labour. Nay, I have had enough of this, and by the time you are reading this letter, you have all the evidence necessary to back this claim. Furthermore, I’m sick of living. Each day is just as tedious as the rest of them, without bringing money hungry businessmen from the East. Montgomery is the only person which is palatable enough to have a decent conversation with, and I’m sick of the bleakness that infects the rest of the world. We're going into debt faster than we can get ourselves out of it, and once this mine has no use for me anymore, I shall eradicate myself from it, and the steadfastly unforgiving world around it. Once the silver is gone, I shall see every one of you in Hell,” Levi concluded, widening his eyes at the last words enclosed in the body of the letter. “Yeesh,” he muttered. “Somebody was having a bad day,” he said before reading the closing of the letter aloud and folding the paper back up into the envelope. “Signed H.V. Walton, February ninth, eighteen seventy-two.”

“Wow, so we kinda really did find a body,” I said, while Levi reached to examine the revolver and the rat poison, stamping out his cigarette beneath his feet until every last ember had devolved into powdery black ash. 

“No, I don’t think so,” Levi muttered, contemplation written across his face while he cocked open the barrel of the gun, looking into each chamber before clicking the gun back shut.

“What are you talking about? That was a suicide note,” I rebuted, pointing at the note with my pinkie finger while he opened the vial of rat poison, sniffing its contents and dumping it out on the ground, watching the translucent brown liquid seep into the floorboards before casually discarding the bottle onto the desk. 

“The guy didn’t kill himself, Eren. He didn’t drink the poison, and there’s still a bullet in the firing chamber. What I’m betting is that he probably had a really shitty day, and the mines weren’t doing all that well, so he felt like he should give himself a contingency plan, so to speak, wrote the note and got everything together, and then when he retired, he stuck the key in the chair and sewed it closed again, so that the key wouldn’t remind him of the bad times at the mine,” Levi explained, and how he had any inkling of how to put those things together the way he did, especially so quickly, and how realistic his explanation sounded by the time it was over with.

“Well, how do you know that, though?” I challenged, trying to see if there was any hole I could poke in his flawless story. “How do you know he didn’t just kill himself?”

“Because Henry Walton was the founder of the town that we live in, Eren, and Duplaine wasn’t founded until the late eighteen-eighties,” Levi explained, pointing at the date on the letter.

“Why didn’t he name it after himself?” I asked, because Duplaine had always sounded like a name to me, but now that I knew it didn’t belong to the founder of the town, I wondered where the name had come from. 

“He named it after his best friend, William Montgomery Duplaine,” Levi said quietly, patting the envelope. “Duplaine died of consumption four years before the town was established, and Walton named it in honor of his dead friend,” Levi said. “Those two were inseparable, Eren. When the mine was just getting started, there was a dry spell that lasted the better part of a year where the mine just wasn’t pulling in anything. Walton managed the mine, and so because the mine was failing, he was practically destitute, paying every expense the mine had directly out of pocket. Duplaine had always been pretty well off, and took Walton and his wife into his home until they could afford to stand on their own two feet.”

“Wow, what a guy,” I murmured, considering the magnitude of the kindness that Duplaine had extended to Walton during his time of need. “How do you know all that?”

“I used to work at the library, Eren. I’ve read a book or two,” Levi scoffed, rubbing his hands together and staring at the revolver. “I knew that the mine went through some shit in the early seventies, but I guess I never really thought about the effect that that would have on the workers,” Levi said, pausing for a moment, the situation somehow heavier than I had expected it to be, even after we’d looked through the contents of the drawer. 

“That’s fascinating,” I said, genuinely intrigued by the lives two people had lived more than a century prior. “Walton must have really cared about Montgomery.”

“It sure seems like it,” Levi nodded, his gaze scampering about the floor of the room, looking anywhere but at me. 

“Do you think they were-” I started to say, but amended myself mid sentence. “Do you think they were just really good friends?”

“I mean, I guess I’ve kinda speculated about it before, but I think the only two people that will ever really know the answer to that died long before anybody ever got the chance to ask them,” Levi concluded, and with that, the mystery was solved. We sat in silence for another minute or two before we heard Riko calling up towards the tower.

“Hey guys!” she shouted, and we walked back out of the tower and onto the fenced walkway that joined up with the staircase. “Get back here before it gets dark! You’ll fall if you can’t see what you’re doing!”

“Find anything cool?” Oluo exclaimed, and Levi made brief eye contact with me, before responding to our friend’s question.

“Yeah! We’ll show you when we get down!” he called back, looking at the people beneath us, drenched in the shadows of the close of day. Turning to me again, he spoke very quietly when he said, “Let’s keep most of this to ourselves, alright? I’ll show ‘em the gun, and we should say it was once an office, but I think we should probably leave it at that.”

“How come?” I asked, wondering why Levi would want to keep such thought-provoking information from the others.

“I guess I just wanted to share a harmless secret with you for once, instead of one that could ruin both of our lives, you catch my drift?” he replied under his breath, turning and walking back into the office to retrieve the revolver, and when he came back out, he closed the key he’d found in my hand, around the corner and out of sight of the rest of the group. “Here, keep this,” he said, but I questioned him while I slipped the key into my pocket.

“Why? You found it, and it ended up being really fuckin’ cool. You should be the one to keep it,” I tried to say but he was quick to remark once I’d said my piece.

“Well, if we hadn’t made it up there, if you’d just wanted to turn back around, I never would have found the key, so really, this is your key, Eren,” he said, the softness in his eyes there just long enough for me to catch a glimpse of it before it slipped back into abject nothingness once again. “Keep it as a memento or something, I don’t give a fuck,” he added after scrutinizing his words for a moment longer before slipping the gun into the waistband of his pants, making sure that the chamber with the bullet in it was not the active chamber before slipping over the fence on the edge of the tower and beginning to make his way back down. In order to avoid a collision, I let him get a bit of a head start before taking a breath and beginning the climb back down.

Levi paused to let me catch up with him, and once I had, we both continued slowly working our way down, gingerly settling our weight upon each beam before moving to the next. I had even gained something of a lead while I dropped from beam to beam, before taking a moment to admire the picturesque image of the tower and Levi climbing down it, all of it dunked in the hues of the dimming dusk. He looked over his shoulder at me, and upon catching me staring, he remarked, “What? Admiring the view?” while a wide grin spread across his face. 

“I dunno, maybe,” I scoffed, feeling my face heat up while I looked at the harrowing climb I still had left. I wasn’t sure if it was just in my mind, but climbing down had always been worse than climbing up, because I had to look down every time I moved my feet. 

“Well, take a picture or something,” he muttered, groaning as he dropped from a beam. “It’ll last longer.”

“I dunno about that,” I laughed, feeling relief wash into me while the ground grew slowly closer. “Besides, I don’t have a camera.”

“Neither do I, but it was a nice sentiment while it lasted,” he hummed, and we fell into a comfortable silence that lasted up until we reached the ground again, and I was glad we started our descent when we did, because by the time we made it down, I could hardly see my hand in front of my face. We had taken long enough that the others had left to retrieve flashlights, and by the time our feet touched the dirt beneath them, they had not yet returned. 

“Well, that was fun,” I said, looking at the glow of flashlights barely peeking over the hilltop we had climbed over on our expedition. 

“Yeah, it was. It’s cool that you thought so,” he muttered, leaning up against one of the thicker corner beams and folding his arms, waiting for the group to befall us and the interrogation to begin. We shared only the agreed upon amount, and Oluo tried to convince Levi to fire the last shot up into the air, to which he aggressively declined, which seemed to chill me a little more than it should have, considering that technically he was doing the right thing by not shooting the round, but I couldn’t allow myself to be entirely comfortable with the concept of him having any sort of functional lethal weapon.

“So, are we gonna get a campfire set up?” Petra asked after taking the time to ogle the gun Levi had found, gesturing back towards the campsite. We all agreed that it was starting to feel like dinnertime, and so we cleared out a patch of the desert, digging with our hands until the pit was deep enough that the fire wouldn’t jump out of the circle we would erect with rocks around it. 

After we had completed the pit, we began to collect wood in the form of tumbleweeds and splinters of old mine buildings until we had enough wood to keep our fire going for a while. We started the fire and found longer sticks to roast hot dogs on, all of our eyes glued to the sky while we waited for the meteor shower to start, and then we froze when we saw a bright orange thread of light scream through the sky just above the eastern horizon.

“Woah! Did you see that?!” Oluo exclaimed, and I nodded enthusiastically at him, rather taken aback myself. 

“Yeah, that was pretty fuckin’ cool,” I replied while Petra squealed and pointed out another one, leaving a stipe in the sky at nearly the same spot. We all looked, and caught the tail end of the shooting star while it temporarily marked our sky.

“Guys we should go away from the fire so that our eyes adjust to the darkness,” Riko suggested, gesturing towards the monolith we had parked our tents beside. 

“Good idea, as long as we can still see the fire,” Petra recommended, not wanting to start some kind of wildfire by neglecting the controlled fire we had started.

“Right,” Oluo said while we all started to find perches on the large boulder, Riko and Petra opting for the highest point on the rock, while Ollie, Levi and I all spread out on a flat part a little lower down, each of us staring fixedly at the sky, waiting to see another streak rush through it like the other one had before.

“Oh, there’s one,” Levi muttered, tapping my shoulder and pointing it out to me before the falling meteor disintegrated into the atmosphere. 

“This is pretty cool,” I said, watching as the sky began to hurl meteors at us at a steadily increasing frequency. “Have either of you ever seen a meteor shower before?”

“Nah,” Ollie, shrugged, “But after this one, I might have to make a habit out of it.”

“Yeah, seriously,” I nodded in response, breathing in the cool breeze that the night was bouncing off of the sage and cacti to collect for us. Something about that evening felt like we had briefly gone to another planet, and there was an ethereal feeling webbing its way through my nervous system while I watched the false stars continue to plummet towards the Earth, each time evaporating on the way down and creating a marvelous light show for all of us to see. 

I wanted to put my arms around Levi, but I knew that that was neither the time nor the place for such displays of affection, not that in our relationship, there ever was a time or a place for anything.

“Look at this shit, there’s two in a row!” I heard Riko call, frantically pointing at the two that had seemingly had the same entry point, but were now burning up in opposite directions. 

“Wow!” Petra exclaimed, and we continued watching in silence for what felt like another half hour, but as I had no timekeeper, I had absolutely no way to verify that. We returned to the campfire, that had done well in our absence, perking right back up once we threw a couple of sticks into the flames. 

“You know, that was crazy,” Petra beamed, skewering a hot dog with a stick she’d found lying around and resting it just above the flames while she waited for it to cook.

“Yeah, that was really cool,” Riko said, doing the same as Petra, intentionally hitting Petra’s stick with her own, until something of a muted lightsaber battle had ensued between the two girls, who were both giggling and arguing about whose fire it was, Oluo and Levi were just watching them go at it, but I decided to poke some fun at them, making lightsaber sound effects every time their sticks collided, but I did not get the response I had initially assumed I would get. Instead, Riko asked me between peals of giggling, “What kinda sound is that?”

Then it hit me that  _ Star Wars _ had not yet come out, and I was teetering on the edge of a pretty serious slip up.  _ Star Wars  _ would dominate the whole movie scene for years, and I was on the brink of spilling it for them. “Oh, you know, sword noises,” I shrugged, hoping that would be convincing enough for them. 

“Swords don’t sound like that,” Levi piped up, and as much as I hated looking like an idiot, blowing my cover would have been much worse. 

“How do you know what swords sound like?” Oluo asked, coming to my rescue and raising an eyebrow at Levi. “How do you know that’s  _ not _ what a sword sounds like?”

“Well, because they don’t sound like  _ that _ ,” Levi argued. “They’re made of metal. They don’t sound like a vacuum cleaner.”

“Okay, but I didn’t sound like a vacuum cleaner. I sounded like a sword,” I defended, folding my arms.

“I really appreciated Eren’s sound effects, so if you’ll excuse me, I have to knock Petra’s hot dog into the fire, with sound, preferably,” Riko finally grumbled, crossing her arms and smacking Petra’s stick again before Levi spoke up.

“Just, for the record, I’m a little bit appalled at the fact that neither of you disinfected your sticks before putting food on them. Just saying,” Levi snorted, sticking his stick into the fire before he had stuck a hot dog on it, lighting it ablaze and blowing it out, as that apparently “kept the germs off,” which I was willing to subscribe to enough that I did it for myself. 

We relaxed around the campfire for another couple of hours until the falling meteors had tapered off completely, and we were left with a clear night’s sky once again. Petra turned in early, and then, at what felt like a little after midnight, the four of us remaining put out the fire and retreated to our tents until the morning. Once we were in our tent for the night, we turned on a flashlight for a while, allowing us to see while we each retrieved our change of clothes for the night from our bags, but then a thought struck me, and it seemed to strike Levi, too, because he verbalized my thoughts nearly as soon as I thought them. 

“So, are we gonna take turns changing, or, you know,” he trailed off, shrugging his shoulders. I could hear the hint of some anxiety in his voice when he said that, and I could feel the anxiety creeping after me as well by the time he’d continued talking. “Because,” he said, speaking in whispers, now, as opposed to the slightly louder voice he’d used to address me with earlier, “I don’t think that seeing each other taking our clothes off would be the best situation to put us in.”

“No, yeah,” I said in agreement, knowing exactly what I would want to do after seeing him get undressed, and knowing that he would want the same. “You’re right. We should definitely not watch each other get undressed.”

“Yeah, that’s one of those bad ideas,” Levi affirmed, flicking off his flashlight, while I did the same to my own. “I think I’m just gonna sleep in my jeans.”

“Good idea,” I muttered, taking my socks off and laying atop my sleeping bag, using what would have been my pyjamas as a pillow, and falling asleep rather quickly, as I was comfortable beside Levi, and sleep was always easy in his presence. 


	23. Chapter 21

When I woke up, I practically had no concept of time or space until I heard Levi’s voice whispering, “Eren, wake up.”

“Hmm?” I mumbled, slowly becoming more aware of my surroundings, until I registered that I was still in the tent, with one of my legs resting across Levi’s hips, and I realized exactly what was wrong with that situation.

“You’ve been kinda rubbin’ up on my leg, man,” he murmured, and although I couldn’t see his face, as my eyes had not yet adjusted to being awake and in the dark, I could tell his voice was strained, and immediately I rolled away from him, now hyper aware of the hard on I must have been sporting, and could certainly feel chafing against my jeans. 

“Jesus, I am  _ so _ sorry,” I began, feeling my entire face flush with an embarrassed heat that made me want to crawl into a hole and die there. “Oh my God, I’m so-”

“Shut it,” Levi snapped, speaking in quiet hisses while he sat up, and I could see him wincing while he rested his hands on his thighs. 

“How long did you let me- I mean, um,” I trailed off, unsure what else I could get away with saying to him.

“Well, a couple minutes, I guess. I dunno. At first I thought you were just trying to stay warm,” he said, both of us speaking rather awkwardly, as there wasn’t exactly a gracious way to go about whatever had just happened. 

“I am so sorry, Levi, I didn’t mean-” I tried to apologize again, but, again, Levi cut me off.

“Don’t apologize,” he whispered, dragging his fingers through his hair, shifting his legs around on the top of his sleeping bag. 

“Why not? I mean clearly I put you in a very uncomfortable situation, and that was so out of line. How could I not try to apologize to you?” I asked, but Levi held a hand up.

“Eren, come here,” Levi said, curling his finger to gesture me closer. Once I was within his arms’s reach, he took me by the waist, and pulled me the rest of the way to him, so that I was straddling his hips, and I could feel the bulge in his pants pushing into mine. I felt both of us shudder creep up our spines at the sudden pressure we were giving each other when Levi whispered, “You don’t need to apologize, you catch my drift?” through his teeth.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to hold still while I straddled his lap, but my plans apparently were completely futile, I realized, when I began to feel the need that had pooled up in my stomach sending shivers of lust through my body every time my weight shifted on him.

“Do you wanna keep going?” he asked, slowly rocking his hips against mine, almost as though he was afraid I’d ask him to stop. 

I nodded, letting out a hum of affirmation that sounded much more like a whine. I leaned closer to him, resting my hands on either side of his neck while he moved forward and caught my lips in a smoldering kind of kiss. It was slow, but only in the way that a fire began slowly, with a single smoking ember that slowly caught it’s surroundings, until an entire forest had burned down. I moved my hands up into his hair while his thumbs rubbed circles into my waist. 

“Levi,” I gasped between heavy kisses, enjoying the way our hips were rutting against each other, while he reached in between us and wrapped his palm around my swelling cock. While he started to provide more pressure to his palming, I heard a string of quiet moans escape my lips, pleasure churning in the pit of my stomach while his hand went to unzip my pants. He didn’t try to move my underwear out of the way, instead, leaning back and pushing one of his fingers against my lips.

“Shh,” he breathed, “you have to be quiet. What would the others think about this, hm?” he asked, and in an attempt to surprise him, I unzipped his pants, at the same time taking his finger into my mouth and sucking on it. I could feel his hips jerk forward into mine, and being completely silent proved more than a little difficult. “I have a confession, Eren,” he whispered into the column of my throat, pulling his finger from my mouth, which exited my lips with a satisfying pop. 

“Oh really?” I breathed, rocking my hips into his and letting out a gasp of air I’d had trapped in my lungs for God knows how long. I had gone nearly three months without having sex, and it was really starting to wear me thin. 

“Before you say anything, I know we’re not supposed to do this,” Levi prefaced while I desperately tried to hear him through the syrupy indulgent haze we had cast ourselves into, though he could have been reading the Bible for how much my body seemed to care. “And I know we’re both gonna pretend it never happened, but, Eren, I love seeing you like this. I want you so badly that sometimes it’s physically incapacitating,” he purred, pushing the band of my underwear down so that there was now nothing covering my ass but the cool desert air, and both of Levi’s palms. “So I’m gonna cut you a deal.”

“Alright, what’s the deal?” I asked, shivering while he gripped tighter to my hips and my bottom, and I gasped when I felt his teeth graze my collarbone.

“The deal is, I’m gonna get you off, but I can’t have sex with you tonight,” he muttered into the skin of my neck. I understood his motivations behind abstinence. He didn’t even need to say anything, but I knew that we were still in the process of trying to justify it to ourselves, and he hadn’t justified everything to that extent yet, which was fine, because I hadn’t quite gotten to that point either. “Just lemme make you cum, alright?”

“What about you?” I asked, a little jarred that in his treatment plan, he somehow didn’t include himself. 

“I’m gonna tell you this right now, and if I hear it from anybody else, you’re dead meat, but I actually don’t mind holding off on my own personal, ah, situation. I like for it to hurt a little,” he said quietly, and I gasped when I felt the wet finger I had put in my mouth now gently pressing against the ring of muscle that lined my entrance. I was at a loss for words to respond to what he’d just said, and was glad that all I had to do to show him I’d heard and cared about the information he told me was bring my lips to his neck and hold tighter to his waist. His skin was salty while my tongue explored his neck, likely from sweating the day before. No matter what he did, I could always smell sage on him when I kissed him, and had grown rather accustomed to having it flood my olfactory senses when my mouth was attached to him in any way. He continued to prod the rim, slowly beginning to ease the tip of his finger into me. I had never been fingered before, but at that moment, I had absolutely no complaints.

“That’s pretty hot, actually,” I finally found it in myself to tell him, gasping while he slid his finger inside all the way up to the first knuckle. Nothing hurt, but I was certainly aware of the foreign object that was now more than an inch inside of me.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” he hummed while I gently bit down on the skin at the base of his neck, pushing my hips into his cock to tease him further while he worked his finger deeper inside of me. 

When he made it to the second knuckle, I began having a hard time breathing while I grew to be hyper aware of every sensation he was putting me through with his finger. I could feel my body stretching while it tried to accommodate for the finger that continued to push my insides, gently prodding the walls while he sped up its slow thrusts.

“Levi, take your shirt off,” I said, sucking in a sharp breath of air when he removed his finger from me and slipped his shirt over his head wordlessly, allowing me a second to do the same before spitting into his hand and coating his remaining fingers with saliva to help them slip inside more easily. 

Once his shirt was removed, my hands began to grip up the sides of Levi’s torso, squeezing harder the deeper his finger went. I moaned when he began trying to guide a second finger in, but all that came out of my mouth was a strangled gasp that forced my hips further onto his lap and I shivered when his met mine halfway, the sweet collision only adding to the thick tension in the air. I leaned down and pressed my lips into his salty skin, slowly kissing my way down his chest, only stopping when I reached his nipple. Now seated on his thighs, my hands were given the perfect opportunity to grab onto his clothed cock. 

“Good God,” he muttered, and I felt his underwear grow damp while he rutted his hips into my hand, and the image of precum dripping down his cock was more than enough to force another breathy sound to escape my lips. 

  
“I love how you taste,” I hummed into his chest, allowing my breath to fan out over his wet skin and savoring the jolt that shook him at the feeling. 

“Well,  _ fuck _ ,” he gasped, grabbing onto my hair with his free hand, tightening his grasp when I lowered my mouth onto his nipple again. “Why does that feel so good?” 

I couldn’t respond to him, so I continued prodding the firm bud of his nipple with the tip of my tongue, forcing him to lean over my shoulder to continue fingering me, now having worked two fingers into me. He began to spread his fingers apart while my muscles contracted around them, sucking them deeper into my entrance. 

“Shh,” he breathed into the nape of my neck, using his unoccupied hand to brush now sweaty hair from my face. “Relax and let ‘em go in. I need to find it.”

“Need to find what?” I asked, but I soon found out what he’d been looking for, nearly buckling into him, and slapping a hand over my mouth to muffle the sound I made. Waves of pleasure rolled through me, starting at light tremors the first time he prodded the sensitive bundle of nerves, and slowly increasing in intensity the harder he pushed his fingers into it. “Oh my God,” I whispered, my breath shaking while I spoke to him. “Keep doing that.”

“That’s what I thought,” he chuckled softly, his voice hoarse while my mouth fell back onto his chest. His long fingers continued to prod my prostate, which I had never expected for it to have been as sensitive as it was. “Eren, keep grinding on my leg like that, and I’ll probably cum first,” he moaned, bucking his hips into my hand. I hadn’t even realized I’d been rocking my hips into his thigh, but as soon as I stopped, I felt the unsatisfactory pulling sensation that made me want to continue doing what I’d been doing. Unexpectedly, Levi dropped his weight to his elbow, and I leaned over him, continuing to use my tongue to push him further over the edge.

“Levi, I  _ want _ to make you cum,” I said between heavy kisses that landed on his chest, trying to remain focused while he pushed his fingers into that sensitive nerve cluster. “Do you even- ah- do you even understand how good it felt to have you hit your climax in  _ my _ fucking hand?”

“God, please,” he moaned into my shoulder, wanton gasps replacing his once-regulated breathing, the sound of his voice driving me further over the edge. 

“Can I make you cum tonight?” I asked, soaking up the shaking, uneven breaths that landed on my skin while he nodded, pushing his hips desperately into my hands while he let out a loud moan from between his tightly shut lips.

“But- ah- I need you to know that I’m only holding off on- ngh- on sex because I wanna be able to see you the first time we fuck. I wanna fuck you in broad fucking daylight, Eren,” he said, desperate moans into his words every few seconds until he was able to compose himself enough to continue talking. As I tightened my grip on Levi’s cock, I felt it beginning to pulse in my hand, and I enjoyed the throbbing heat while I continued to rub him off through his underwear. I could also feel precum working to wet my boxers while I continued pushing my hips into his thigh while he laid beneath me, his back arching against the floor of the tent while he breathed heavily through the hand he laid over his lips. I knew that he must have been making an active effort to hold off his orgasm as long as possible. 

“Fuck, Levi,” I panted into his chest, trying to imagine him actually pushing his cock into me for the first time, which proved to be a visual that was far too powerful for my feeble-minded state. I wanted to take every inch of him, and hear the sound of a headboard slapping against the wall. I wanted to see him while I touched him, and imagining even that alone would have been more than enough to get me to my climax. As it was, my entire body was shaking while I held myself up over him, and then all at once, my vision went completely white when I closed my eyes, and I could feel the pent up electricity finally release itself, rolling through me with the force of a freight train while I had one of the best orgasms I’d had in my entire life. I had underestimated the power two fingers held over me, and I was paying the price, quiet whines escaping my lips while the rest of my body fell onto Levi’s.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered, pressing a kiss to the top of my head while my fingers lazily continued touching him, not that he needed much more stimulus, I realized when I felt one of his legs trembling as it wrapped around one of mine, tangling our bodies further while I tried to finish him off. “That was quite a display.” His thrusts were becoming uneven while each time he pushed into my hand drove him closer to his high. He was angelic looking in the darkness, his fair skin and his black hair creating a perfect contrast of midnight blues that always seemed to wash over him in the absence of light. “Eren, I’m almost there, oh God,” he gasped, and I rose over him as I regained energy, not bothering to untangle our legs and pants from one another while I captured him in a final kiss, letting his sharp breaths fan out on my lips between kisses, each one longer and slower than the last, while my hand only sped up.

I pumped his cock until I heard him cry out, but all his words were drowned by my lips while he came, arching his back against the floor like he did it for a living and soaking my hand, even through his underwear, and when he was done, I rested my head on his chest to catch the remainder of my breath.

“That was the best not-sex ever,” I hummed into his chest, eliciting a low, raspy laugh from his lips. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, pressing another kiss to the crown of my head before saying, “I’ll bet you say that to all of your secret homosexual lovers.”

“Is that what we are?” I asked, lifting my eyes to see the expression on his face. 

“I would say so,” he scoffed, gripping and releasing one of my asscheeks to prove his point. “I mean you did let me stick my fingers up your ass to help you cum, so if there was another way to take that, I missed that meeting.” 

“By the way, how did you learn how to do that?” I asked, relaxing more while I rolled onto my back at his side, all of my muscles being practically useless while I sank into the ground beside him. 

“Suffice it to say I’ve had a lot of alone time to practice recently,” he scoffed, and even through my completely spent haze, the image of Levi getting himself off sent shivers creeping up my spine, giving my arms goosebumps that pricked up my skin like a dull current had shot through me. I heard him rustling beside me while he removed his pants. “I’m gonna change my underwear real quick. Don’t look.”

“Good idea,” I replied, working to peel my own jeans off of my sticky, sweaty body and placing them beside Levi’s. I made a point not to let my eyes wander towards Levi while we changed and put our jeans back on, but in the dark, I immediately could feel that the pair of jeans I was now wearing were too small in several areas. Laughing, I looked over to Levi, who was swimming in my jeans. “I think we grabbed the wrong ones,” I snickered, gesturing towards the lower half of his body.

“Yeah, sure looks like it,” Levi scoffed, unzipping my pants and pulling them off of himself, tossing them to me while I tossed him his. We redressed ourselves and laid back down onto our sleeping bags, both of us now far too hot to actually sleep inside of them.

We were lucky to have had the good sense to get clothing back on, because not even a minute after I had put my shirt back on, I heard quiet footsteps crunching towards our tent and Petra’s voice whispering, “Eren? Levi? Are you guys awake?”

I stayed silent, waiting for Levi to respond how he saw fit. “Yeah, we’re up, what’s going on?” he asked, leaning forward to unzip the tent, and then the rainfly. 

“You guys are gonna laugh at me,” she whispered, pulling her long, tangled hair up into a ponytail while we emerged from the tent, closing it behind us and stepping onto the dry earth beneath us. “But I think there’s a ghost.” 

“Ghosts aren’t real, Petra,” Levi grumbled, shaking his head at the woman that stood before him. “Go back to bed.” 

“No, I’m serious,” she said, looking around nervously before flicking on her flashlight, temporarily blinding the three of us while our eyes adjusted to the sudden light that flooded our surroundings. “I woke up because I heard footsteps, and then I heard creepy noises coming from the mine.” 

“Creepy noises?” I asked, raising an eyebrow, hoping we hadn’t been as loud as I’d thought we were being. It gave me comfort to know, however, that we were farther from the mine than she was, so either she was directionally confused, or we had been quiet enough that she heard something completely unrelated to us. Levi shot me a quick glance before replying to her on his own.

“You’re psyching yourself out, Love,” he said, pulling her into a quick hug before she could respond. “There’s no ghosts. You probably just heard an animal.”

“It would really make me feel better if we could go look. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have bothered you guys if I thought it was an animal. And I would have asked Riko and Ollie if I didn’t think I’d find them naked.”

“Fair enough,” Levi scoffed, immediately able to put on a mask for Petra while she was with us, whereas I needed a moment longer to compose myself. I largely attributed his ability to change so quickly to the diagnoses I had conjectured at previously, but I was happy to see him hugging Petra nonetheless.

“Is that a yes?” she asked, pointing towards the mouth of the mine with her flashlight, turning to us with an inquisitive expression on her washed out face, the moonlight making her look almost sickly when the light wasn’t directly on her. 

“No, that was a very conditional maybe,” Levi said, folding his arms at the girl in front of us while she pleaded with worried eyes for us to come along with her to investigate.

“What are the conditions required to make it a yes?” she asked, seemingly using her more analytical side to reason with Levi.

“The condition is that we go look, and then you go back to fuckin’ bed, and let us get some sleep,” he muttered in response, dragging his long fingers through his hair, and reminding me exactly what those fingers had been doing only minutes prior. 

“Fuck, okay, man. Don’t be such a dick head. It isn’t my fault this place is haunted,” Petra grumbled, shaking her head while she started down the hill towards the mine. 

“It’s your fault for thinking that ghosts are real things that actually exist and willingly spend eternity scaring teenagers,” Levi snapped, falling into step behind her while we worked to catch up with her. 

“Shut up,” she hissed, stumbling over a loose piece of dirt and nearly losing her balance before brushing herself off and continuing on her way.

“You shut up, jackass,” Levi snapped back, clicking his tongue at the girl in the thin cotton romper, her shoulders covered with her worn leather jacket draped over them while she padded forward on the balls of her feet, hastily clothed in her unlaced boots. I followed closely behind Levi while Petra led the way, feeling some anxiety about going directly into a condemned mine because of an easily explainable noise. I wished I could have just told her what we’d been doing, so that I wouldn’t have to be dragged down into the looming dark buildings. Alas, times had not changed. I doubted that we would have had a public relationship, even if it had taken place when I’d gone to high school instead. I wondered if being gay would ever be okay with the general populus, or if every single anomaly to society would always be treated as an untouchable. 

Lost in my daydreaming, I didn’t even realize we had arrived at the mouth of the mine until Petra tapped my shoulder and asked, “What’s on your mind? You look like you just witnessed a murder.”

“Huh? No, I’m okay,” I replied quietly, shaking myself back into consciousness once again. When I looked at Levi, I couldn't help but notice the shifty expression his eyes wore, like he was looking for somewhere to escape to.

“You sure?” Levi asked, tapping his fingers on his flashlight in a manner that only added to his nervous looking demeanor. 

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I nodded, smiling at him, hoping that the smile would ease his nerves a little bit before we did anything else. 

“Well, if you need anything, let me know, alright, man?” Petra offered, flashing me a brief grin before turning towards the taped off cavern. 

“For sure,” I replied, knowing I’d likely never take her up on that offer, but willing to cooperate with niceties for the time being. 

“Well, let’s get this shit over with,” Levi grumbled, ducking beneath a strip of the tape and shining his light down the shaft. Petra held the tape up for me, and I ducked inside. She followed behind, taking up the rear of our group. “Do you see any fucking ghosts?” he snapped once we were all inside, walking towards the back of the tunnel. We had made it about halfway to the elevator before he asked again, “Huh? Do you?”

“No,” Petra muttered, shining her light towards the end of the shaft, where the elevator once was while I leaned against a sturdy looking support beam. “But since we’re already here, wanna see what’s in here?”

“Oh,  _ sure _ ,” he sneered, folding his arms and looking at the ceiling, while he berated his friend with bitter sarcasm. “Let’s just go skip around the inside of a mine that could easily collapse on our heads at any second. Sounds like an award winning idea, Ral, I mean seriously- Oh shit! Look out!” he exclaimed before several things happened at once. I looked up and saw the top of the support beam I’d been leaning against break off from the ceiling fixture and fall to the floor, and then I heard and felt a low rumbling as the smaller beams began to buckle. “Run!” 

“What’s going on?!” Petra squeaked while I ducked out of the way of falling rubble, sprinting towards the only way out, which now felt like more than a mile away from us.

“Good news,” Levi shouted while he ran along the tracks where the mine cart used to go. “The mine isn't haunted. Bad news, we’re gonna be the ones haunting it if we don’t get the hell outta here!” I heard the ceiling begin to cave in behind us, but I didn’t want to look behind me in case it would slow me down. “Goddammit, Eren you really know how to pick things that break off when you touch ‘em you fucking gremlin!” 

“Now is not the time!” I shouted, nearly at the tape again when I heard Petra call out from behind us.

“My shoe! Oh my God, my laces are stuck!” she shouted. Levi and I both immediately whipped around and saw her trying to get her foot loose from a railroad spike. “A little help would be appreciated!”

The first thing I noticed apart from Petra’s predicament while I ran back with Levi to get her loose was how quickly the collapsing ceiling was approaching us. Pushing the beam over had caused a chain reaction, and we would all be dead if we didn’t get out in a timely manner. The rumble was much louder, now while I dropped to my knees and tried to get her laces untangled from the tracks. Levi rushed behind her and lifted her from the ground by the waist, to give me a clear view of the laces without her feet getting in the way, but we had dropped our flashlights while we had been running, so it was much more difficult in the blackness.

“Fuck! Hurry up, Eren!” Levi boomed while Petra kicked her feet, trying to get it loose. “The roof is shaking, man!”

“I’m trying!” I shouted back, the adrenaline in my system frazzling my nerves and destroying my hand-eye dexterity. “Fuck!” I said, shifting my focus now to getting her shoe off of her foot before the ceiling above us crushed us under several tons of mountain. “Can you carry her?”

“Yeah, just get the shoe off her fuckin’ foot and let’s go,” Levi replied, tightening his grip around her waist while I freed her foot. 

“Okay, got it! Go, go, go!” I exclaimed, pushing Levi’s shoulders to give him a running start with Petra while we burst through the yellow tape, tumbling down the slope leading up to the mouth, watching it get filled in with rock only seconds after we made it out.

“Somebody probably heard that,” Petra muttered, dusting herself off and sticking a finger through a hole in her pyjamas, and the small frown on her face was almost comical. I was still feeling the effects of the adrenaline as it pushed me to keep running.

“That’s exactly what I was just thinking,” Levi sighed, shaking his head. “Somebody’s gonna fuckin’ call this in. We gotta get outta here. C’mon, move,” he said, taking off towards the campground, while Petra and I quickly followed behind. Petra had removed her other shoe for better balance, and was now running beside me. 

“Get up!” I heard Levi’s stern voice command Oluo and Riko. “And my God, put some clothes on, we gotta go.”

“How the hell’d you sleep through that, you morons?!” Petra snapped when we reached the camp. “We caved the whole mine in.”

“What in the hell,” Ollie grumbled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes while he emerged from his tent. Petra ran towards her tent and began packing her things up again, and Levi began dismantling the fire pit and stomping the ash into the rest of the dirt. 

“Pack up your shit; we’re leaving,” Levi replied, while I made off towards our tent to begin bagging my things, but in the dark without a flashlight, it made it hard to tell what was his and what was mine. Giving up and assuming we would likely be staying in the same place that night, I began throwing things into bags haphazardly, not worrying anymore about what went where. Once the tent was cleaned out, I began dismantling the rainfly and collapsing the poles, sloppily shoving everything back into the bag it had come from and slinging all five bags over my shoulders, both of our backpacks, the tent, and two sleeping bags. Petra had all of her things packed up, and Oluo and Riko were taking the last stakes out of their tents by the time we all returned to regroup. 

“Okay, Levi, I can carry coolers,” Riko said, reaching down and hoisting up both of the heavy coolers on her own. Oluo held his tent and sleeping bags while Petra held hers. Each person apart from Levi wore a backpack, and I held two assuming Levi would likely have to carry Petra through the more treacherous parts of the trek back. 

“And I can carry Petra when she needs it,” Levi said, taking the words out of my mouth. 

“Good thinking,” Oluo said, starting back south towards where we had parked the vehicles. 

“Alright, let’s bounce,” Petra said, hobbling forward on the uneven ground. 

We all moved as quickly as the several pounds of baggage would permit while we raced back to the cars. We had gotten most of the way there when Petra needed carrying, and upon being lifted, blood dripped from her feet and onto the ground below her. “You fuckin’ trooper,” Levi said, visually in awe of Petra’s endurance, even with feet that were being sliced up on bushes and sun-hardened mud. 

Petra huffed a quiet echo of gratitude when Levi lifted her from the ground, and I realized that if he had just been carrying Petra’s things for her, the scrapes on her feet wouldn’t have been as big of an issue, but none of us were thinking clearly; we were just trying to get the hell out of Dodge. Oluo had taken the lead as he now was the only person with a flashlight, and so when he zeroed in on his truck, he nearly jumped for joy.

“Over here, guys!” he shouted, gesturing for us to follow him, as though we weren’t already. “Okay, put everything in my trunk, we’re going to Marco’s. He’ll know how to handle this.”

“So much for getting sleep tonight,” Levi grumbled, setting Petra on the hood of the truck and tossing her things into the bed.

“If anybody asks, we have no idea what happened there,” Riko said, hoisting herself into the cab of Oluo’s truck, while Ollie jumped into the driver’s side, turning the key and revving his engine. 

“Obviously, Riko,” Levi said, lifting Petra off the hood of the truck and fireman-carrying her towards her sports car. “Alright, your feet are too fucked up for me to let you drive. I’m driving. Eren, you take shotgun,” he instructed while Petra unlocked her door. Levi pushed his seat forward and fed her into the back row before pushing it back again, and climbing in. I climbed into my side and we sped off after Oluo, who’s lights were still bright as he drove away slowly, giving us a chance to catch up before he began to accelerate.

“We are so fucked,” I sighed when I could finally breathe again. 

“Not if you keep your head on your shoulders and your mouth fuckin’ shut,” Levi explained, speeding on the dark, lonely highway back towards Duplaine. “Alright? Am I fucking clear? After tonight, I don’t wanna ever hear about this again. From either of you.”

“Yeah,” I said while Petra gave a silent nod of confirmation to Levi through the rear-view-mirror, but as worried as I was, I was grateful we had all made it out alive.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as an aside, I'll likely be taking the first couple weeks of October off, because I have a few birthdays in my life that I need to take time for.

The ride to Marco’s house had been gloriously uneventful, but as we turned off of the main road into town, I heard sirens on the street where we’d been only moments prior.

“Levi, do you think they’re going to the mine?” Petra asked anxiously, pressing her lips together and staring out the window as Levi continued to drive.

“I sure as Hell hope not,” he muttered, letting out a sharp breath through his nose while he continued to drive down side streets. “Let’s just forget about it; it’ll all blow over.”

“Mm’kay,” she hummed, resting her head against the glass of the car, wiping the blood from her feet off on a towel she had resting on the floor of the back seat. 

“Hey, you’re gonna be okay,” I said, reaching behind myself and resting my hand on Petra’s bent knee. “We’re gonna get you all cleaned up and taken care of. Marco will handle it, okay?”

“I know, I’m just still kinda stunned, I guess,” she said, and for a second, I began to wonder why I wasn’t anywhere near as panicked as Petra seemed to be. In fact, I was almost completely back to baseline while Petra seemed to be going into shock. I began to wonder who was responding more neurotypically, and was quickly able to deduce that I was having a vastly atypical reaction to such a traumatic experience. I looked to Levi, who seemed to be in the same phase of reaction as I was, which was only cause for more concern. I understood why he was reacting the way that he was, but I wondered why  _ I _ was reacting so coldly to being faced with my own mortality. I didn’t have much longer to consider it, as Levi came to an abrupt stop when we reached Marco’s house, all of his lights out, except for a dim candle glowing in his kitchen windowsill. 

“Well, taxi stops here. Everybody out,” Levi said as abruptly as he’d hit the brakes only a couple of seconds prior, parking on the curb while Oluo pulled into the driveway. I climbed from the passenger seat and pushed it forward so that Petra could climb out of the car, motioning for her to climb onto my back so that her feet wouldn’t take more damage. 

She hoisted herself up onto my back, while I shuffled her up so that her legs could wrap around my waist before walking with Levi to Marco’s front door. Levi began to knock on the door, knocking louder with each second of silence that passed. Oluo and Riko crowded behind us, seemingly embarrassed to be making a scene at such an ungodly hour, but relief flooded their shaded expressions when a light in the bedroom flicked on. Levi stopped knocking and I heard a quiet rustle of movement before long. 

“What the hell, guys?” Marco sniffed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and folding his other arm across the naked upper half of his body. The lower half of his body was covered in loose cotton pants that flicked towards his legs as the cool night air wandered into his house. “It’s like, the middle of the night, man.”

“We had a bit of an emergency on our camping trip,” Levi said quietly while I adjusted Petra’s weight on my back, trying not to let her tire out my muscles by distributing her a little more evenly.

“Is the fuzz involved?” he asked, leaning against the doorframe and folding his arms. He let out a small yawn while he waited for Levi to respond.

“Not yet,” Levi replied, watching as Marco let out a sigh and straightened up to full posture again.

“Get in here,” he whispered, looking past us at our cars. “Oluo, Petra, move your cars into the backyard. Park on the gravel by the clothesline and come in through the back door.”

“Petra’s actually, well, she can’t drive,” I said while Petra lifted one of her bare feet for Marco to look at. His dark eyes widened as they melted into the worried crease on his forehead.

“Okay, gimme the keys, then, and I can take the car around,” Marco offered, holding his hand up while Levi passed him the car keys. We were quickly ushered inside before Marco and Ollie left to move the vehicles from plain sight. 

We all jumped when we heard a knock at the back door, but relaxed when we remembered that the knock had come from the other two trying to get inside. I set Petra down on one of the couches before Riko unlocked the door and let Oluo and Marco back into the house. 

Marco tiptoed to the kitchen window, which faced the street, and closed the curtains before turning on a couple floor lamps in the living room and dropping lethargically into his beanbag chair. “So, start at the beginning,” he said, gesturing for the rest of us to take our seats. Levi and I took spots beside Petra on the couch, while Riko and Ollie sat cross legged at our feet. The two on the floor remained silent while Petra and Levi took turns telling the story, allowing me to add to it when I saw fit.

“So, basically you guys accidentally caved an entire mountain in,” Marco said, lighting cigarette and taking a long drag. 

“Essentially, yes,” Levi said, pressing his lips together into a thin line while he considered his next words. “What do we do from here?”

“Well, I mean you can’t go talking about it, obviously,” Marco replied, tying his hair back with a ponytail holder while he spoke. “I’m not even gonna tell the girls. They’re outta town this weekend doing whatever they do. As far as anybody should know, you were out camping, and that’s the end of the story. But don’t go back to your houses until Sunday, okay? Just crash here so that you can say you were still camping when all that happened. Lay low, and things’ll blow over.”

“When you say “stay here” do you mean, like sleep on your couch and stuff?” Riko asked, lifting her eyebrows when Marco nodded.

“Yeah, I have a couch in here, and now that it’s cooled off a little, the couches in the garage should be alright, too. I have the garage converted into another living room of sorts, but it doesn’t get the air conditioning, so I can’t go in there in the summer unless I have the garage door open, but that kinda defeats the purpose, you know?”

“How so?” I asked, curious as to how opening a door would render an entire room useless.

“Well, because I like to smoke in there, and with an open garage door, anybody driving by would see me smoking my dope,” Marco explained, and that was good enough for me.

“Fair enough,” I said, nodding so that he would know I understood.

“So, I’m not tired anymore. Wanna see what’s on TV? Or maybe smoke a little weed and listen to The Beatles or something?” Marco suggested, gesturing first to his small television in the corner of his living room, and then to his record player.

“Sure, I mean I’m pretty wired, and I’m sure the rest of us are, too,” Petra said, reminding the group that she had not had treatment for her bloody feet. 

“Oh shit, lemme get you something for your feet,” Marco said, standing and walking towards the garage of his house. “You guys can pick the music. I don’t really care what we listen to; it’s all good.” He disappeared behind the door and Ollie crawled across the carpet to the large stack of albums on the floor beside the record player, leafing through them while he tried to pick one. He pulled out a large album with a black and white cover that I immediately recognized to be a largely renowned Fleetwood Mac album. I knew it must have been rather new, because nobody other than Oluo seemed to recognize it, and so he flipped the disc to Side 1, and began to play the songs on the record player. 

Marco quickly reemerged into the house with a small bucket, which he filled to the best of his ability in the sink, and I could see steam wafting from the bucket that was now full of what I assumed was hot water. He then pulled a bar of soap from the sink and dunked it into the water a couple of times until his dark hands in the dim light were covered in frothy suds. He then pulled a clean dishrag from the drawer and returned to the living room. 

“Gimme your feet, babe, right here,” he said, kneeling in front of Petra on the floor. 

“What about the carpet?” the redhead asked, anxiety in her voice while Marco pointed to one of her feet. 

“Don’t worry about the carpet. Carpets can be cleaned, and besides, interesting stains make for really good stories later on,” Marco replied, his voice a happy chirp of reassurance in all of our ears. Petra shifted her feet so that Marco had access to them and he took one of them into his hands, dunking the rag into the soapy water and beginning to blot the sole of her foot. 

“Ow! That stings!” she snapped, clearly restraining herself from hitting her friend while she winced at the pain. 

“It stings because the soap is cleaning it out,” Marco said softly, wetting the rag again and continuing to gently clean her feet. Levi was practically carved from stone with how still he sat beside Petra, the only thing reminding us that he was human was his eyes that occasionally darted over towards the now bloody rag that Marco was using on Petra. 

“I know,” she grumbled, rolling her eyes at Marco while he continued to clean off her wounds. “Doesn’t make it hurt any less, though.”

  
“I’m sorry, Doll, but if we don’t do this now, it’s gonna really be terrible later,” he said, trying to console her while he traded off feet. “You guys can pack a pipe or use the bong. Pipes are in the drawer of that end table over there,” he said, pointing at a small table with a rather bohemian-looking lamp resting on the top of it. Small bead strings dangling from the lampshade slapped against each other while Riko went fishing through the drawers, pulling out a large woven pouch and setting it atop a seemingly handmade doily that sat on the center of the table, held in place beneath the lamp. From the pouch, she produced a small glass pipe painted a beautiful sunset of colors within the stem, dulled slightly by the thick black resin that clung to the inside walls. 

“Is this one good?” Riko asked, holding the pipe where Marco could see.

“Yep. That’s a good one. Weed is in the grinder,” he said, nodding absently while he meticulously worked on Petra’s other foot, pulling small rocks and broken splinters from the bottom of it, just as he’d done for her left side. 

“Thanks, man,” Riko nodded, pressing the weed into the bowl of the pipe and lighting it with a small lighter that she had pulled from her pocket. She took a quick hit and passed it to her boyfriend, who continued the slow marijuana train before passing it to Levi, who passed it to Petra, who passed it to Marco, who passed it to me, and before long, we were all melting into the furniture that we sat on or in front of. Marco finished cleaning Petra’s feet before wrapping gauze around them, making it look like she was wearing white socks on both of her feet before she pulled her legs akimbo once more. 

“Thank you Marco. Seriously, I would not have been able to do that myself,” she said quietly, falling backwards into the cushions of the couch, bobbing her head slowly to the music.

“Well, it looks like Petra picked her couch,” Marco laughed. “I’ve got two in the garage, so, you guys can divvy it up however you see fit.”

Inevitably, Riko and Oluo volunteered to share a couch, leaving the last one for Levi and me to try to inconspicuously sleep on together. We relaxed in the living room until Petra had fallen asleep, practically mid-sentence. Levi and I stood from the couch and laid her on her back while Marco tossed a blanket over her petite form. Riko and Oluo were the next to retire, leaving only the three of us in the living room. 

“You know, you don’t have to pretend like you don’t know each other, now that everybody’s gone to sleep,” Marco sighed, getting comfortable on his beanbag chair while Levi and I sat a safe distance apart from one another on the carpet. Marco had dumped the bucket into the kitchen sink, thoroughly cleaning everything out before taking the bucket back into the garage and stepping outside to hang the rag on the clothesline, and now he was finally able to settle down again. “I mean seriously, you two are hardly breathing.” When he said that, I realized that I hadn’t taken a breath in far too long, and my body was grateful to finally expel the carbon dioxide from my lungs.

“Excuse me?” Levi snapped, pulling his knees to his chest defensively before crossing his arms around them. There was certainly a briarpatch waiting for Marco if he decided to push the subject.

“Never mind, man. Don’t psych yourself out. I can see the vein in your forehead doing that thing it does,” Marco laughed quietly, pointing to Levi’s forehead with his pinkie finger. I glanced over to where the boy had been pointing, and sure enough, Levi had a thin blue vein protruding from his forehead while he sat completely still, clenching his jaw so tightly that it was a wonder he didn’t break teeth. 

“Mind your business. Don’t look at me,” Levi muttered, looking rather cagey huddled up in a ball, keeping his respectable three feet from me while I wanted nothing more than to just roll him over to me and get my arms around him. That night had been one of the more jarring nights I’d ever had, and certainly the closest I’d ever been to meeting my maker, but once the weed in the pipe turned to black coal and white ash, we were ready to pass out like Petra had, her soft snores now making us chuckle in our intoxication. 

“Well, you know, if you need anything, I sleep over there,” Marco mumbled, pointing ungracefully at his bedroom door. “ And one of those couches is a chesterfield from my grandpa, and Riko and Oluo took the corduroy one - I saw when I put the bucket away - so you guys got the good one. Ignore the weird seams. It’s actually really nice to sleep on. Sometimes I go out and sleep on it. It’s good stuff.”

“Well, thanks Marco,” I said, smiling lazily at him while I fought to keep my eyes open for as long as possible. Looking over, I saw that Levi was still tense, but significantly less so than he’d been only a few minutes prior. “And thanks for taking us in. We all really appreciate it.”

“Right on, man. If you ever need anything at all, just knock on my door, alright?” Marco replied, raising his eyebrows, making his face look almost comical with his high brows in contrast with his drooped, evidently inebriated eyelids. The whites of his eyes were a soft pink, even in the dim glow from the yellow lights, and it felt like time and space had for a moment become entirely meaningless while the record player came to a stop. “Hold on, before you go, I gotta play you this song. Really listen to it, okay? I think it’s about a witch or something.”

“Okay,” I said, while Levi nodded tersely, not having relaxed his arms as of then, still binding his bent legs with them just as tightly as ever. Marco moved the needle to a certain spot on the record, listening and adjusting its position on the disc on his hunt for the beginning of the song he wanted to show us. I had a feeling he was showing us Rhiannon, which I remembered loving as a very young child, and much to my elation, that was exactly the one he chose. 

The soothing guitar filled the room while he carefully turned the dial up, wary of playing it too loud and waking Petra up. When Stevie Nicks began to sing, I looked over to Levi, who had finally stretched his legs out, and was now sitting minutely closer to me than he had been previously. I was practically entranced by the song, aided by the marijuana that was making my entire body feel as though it was made of lead. I smiled and nodded along to the beat when Marco quietly sang the words to the song, almost like it was some kind of fairy tale he was telling us. I certainly couldn’t deny that the atmosphere had changed very rapidly into something that almost seemed to have been touched by some kind of magic. 

“Eren, do you mind if I sit here?” Levi asked, gesturing towards the nearly closed gap between us.

“Go for it, man,” I said, relaxing while the side of Levi’s body moved so that it was touching the side of mine. He kept his hands in his lap and I kept mine in mine, but the twinkle in Marco’s eyes let me know that Levi had made some kind of progress that night. It was nearly five in the morning when Levi and I finally turned in for the night, having gotten distracted listening to different songs Marco kept showing us. We smoked two more bowls in that amount of time, and by the time we stood to actually make the walk to the garage, we had to lean on each other for support, neither of us wanting to take a spill in our doped up state of mind. Because the chesterfield was long, but more on the narrow side as far as couches went, we had to practically sleep on top of one another in order for both of us to fit, not that either of us minded. Levi fell asleep almost immediately with his head resting on my chest, his ear right over my beating heart while I, too, drifted off into syrupy black oblivion.


	25. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoo, tense, don't worry, it'll get better.

We didn’t wake up until the next afternoon, about seven hours after everybody else had gotten up and started to mesh together with their existences again. I woke up before Levi did, and immediately began looking for ways to get out from underneath him without waking him up. Wiggling a little ways closer to the open side of the couch, I tried to roll Levi onto the cushion beneath me, but ended up waking him in the process.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” I scoffed, wincing at Levi’s adjustments on top of me until he climbed off of me, allowing me to finally climb off of the couch.

“Morning,” he muttered, opening the door and stepping back into the house while I trailed quietly behind him. We found the others crowded around the television, watching some kind of afternoon horror movie. I had very vague memories of the Saturday horror channel, but only memories of its existence, nothing beyond that. “How come you didn’t wake us up? It’s almost five p.m,” Levi said, addressing no one in particular, but the group as a collective. He pointed towards an unusual looking wall clock in reference of the absurd hour to be waking up. 

“You both looked so peaceful,” Petra began, smiling at us while we took our seats on the couch, far behind the other group of moviewatchers; all of them practically had their faces pressed against the glass of the television. 

“Yeah, we couldn’t just wake you up. You had a long night,” Riko piggybacked onto her friend’s previous remark.

“I just didn’t wanna be the one to wake you up. Felt like too much of a hassle, and I was trying to enjoy my Saturday,” Oluo chimed in, grinning at Levi, who rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue in response. 

“Gee, thanks,” Levi muttered, shooting a brief glare at Ollie before crossing his legs and asking, “So, where’s Marco?”

“He’s getting stuff for dinner, because he doesn’t want us in view of the street until tomorrow night. Just in case,” Riko said unenthusiastically, falling backwards onto the brown shag carpet beneath her. I had never understood putting decorative carpets in already carpeted rooms, but I wasn’t one to judge life decisions, either. 

“Oh okay,” I said, getting comfortable and trying to focus on the movie. The rest of the weekend and the beginning of the week after that was all a rushed blur. After Sunday, none of us had time to get the group together after school, so we all independently relied on the Sadie Hawkins dance to be our reunion. We were all individually trying to fly under the radar, once the mine collapse made front page news for our small, two stoplight town. The Duplaine Register was having a field day documenting every little detail of the collapse, and so none of us wanted to be seen together for a while, in case it affiliated us with the crime. It was initially Levi’s idea on Sunday night, to split up for a while until things blew over, and it had proven to work marvelously. 

Not one of us had been even considered to be suspicious, it was the work of vagrant vandals according to the local news, and even if anybody had asked, we had gotten our story straight enough that any one of us could have passed a polygraph. We had been camping in the BLM land south-east of town, nowhere near the north-west, where the mine had been. That was what we would have said, if anybody had asked, but luckily nobody did. There had been a scare when Petra told us that she had left her other boot at the mouth of the mine, but it was quickly absolved by Levi pulling said boot from his threadbare backpack and tossing it towards her.

I was grateful to not have been a suspect, because I had much bigger fish to fry on the homefront, and all of the pressing matters came to fruition the night before the dance. The day had begun in a rather ordinary, mundane manner, as many important days do, and school was just as dull as ever, so upon my arrival at home, I was shocked to discover Farlan and Isabel waiting for me on the couch, both of their heads turning in my direction at the sound of the front door opening and closing. 

I shouldn’t have been shocked, because I was an active participant in experimental rehabilitation to a serial killer, but there I stood, without a clue what to say once Farlan produced a new tape from a small mailing parcel he had likely received at work.

We had heard less from Hanji in October, and this was the first we’d heard from her in November, all of us quietly hoping that this time, her tape would be more than inconsequential. We had gotten our wish in a rather stressful manner, as the night would soon reveal to us.

“Alright, sit down,” Farlan instructed calmly, gesturing toward the easy chair where he normally sat, having given up his seat for a spot beside the lady of the house. It wasn’t that Isabel was unattractive, I just couldn’t quite tell Farlan’s intentions, considering the both of them had been married to other people before they’d gone back with me. “Everybody listening?” he asked, clicking the tape into place and rewinding it back to the beginning.

“Yep,” Isabel and I said in unison, and I watched her click her pen and stare holes into the notepad in her hands. 

_ “Hey, guys, _ Hanji’s voice said through the speakers on the playback device, the chipper pep in her voice ever present.  _ So, nothing has changed yet, in any of the books, but the guys at MIT are keeping very close tabs on everything that is going on, and you’ll be the first people I tell if something changes. You guys are real troopers, going back in time, and adjusting to a completely different set of circumstances. I really commend your efforts.  _

There was a pause in Hanji’s speech and I could hear papers rustling through the feedback of the recording, before hearing Hanji’s voice pick up again. “ _ So now that I’ve schmoozed you a little, here’s what I need from you guys. Justice Zackly is asking for a progress report from each of you individually, to be enclosed in your response to this tape.Try and squeeze every little detail into this, because it’s gonna be really crucial in whether or not we try to continue treatment in spite of nothing having changed yet. There are ten questions he needs each of you to answer, as well as a written and signed and dated statement detailing your agreement to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, in the Orange County court of law. The exact words you need to write and signature are these “ _ _ I swear that the evidence that I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. Affirmation: I solemnly affirm that the evidence that I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Then just sign and date them along with your statements. So, I’ll just read these off to you: _

_ “One: Has the subject mentioned harming himself, or others? Has the subject acted upon these statements? If yes, why? If not, what was done to prevent the subject from doing so? _

_ “Two: Have any of the participants in this trial caught the subject in a lie? What was the lie about? Did the subject appear to show remorse for presenting you with a falsehood? _

_ “Three: Have the participants all upheld the terms of the contract that binds them? If not, why not? What were the circumstances of the transgression? _

_ “Four: Has the subject revealed anything that has not caused direct harm to any person(s), living or dead, but still worthy of notice to any of the participants and Attorney Zoe? Was this reported to Attorney Zoe? If not, what was revealed, and why was it withheld? _

_ “Five: Has the subject displayed sociopathic behavior, such as isolation from social activities and/or events, a lack of remorse for negative actions, a willingness to manipulate conversations and/or situations for personal gain, an inflated sense of self, and/or a sense of lawlessness? If so, how is this being managed through day to day interactions with the subject? _

_ “Six: Has the subject displayed signs of sexual deviance such as tendencies towards homosexuality, beastiality, or pedophilia?” _

I held up a hand, and Farlan was quick to pause the tape, looking up at me through thick blonde eyelashes. His expression was sympathetic, but it seemed that both of them were waiting for me to speak.

“I just don’t like that they grouped in homosexuality with pedophilia, and I need a second to think about that,” I said quietly, folding my arms, and leaning back into the recliner. It wasn’t like I should have expected anything different, but it was sad to see that times had not changed, once again. 

“Well, Eren, this is a tough case, and it might be a little touchy to bring up homosexuality, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s sexual deviance, kid. In the eyes of the law, that’s exactly what it is. You didn’t sign up to do this because you wanted everybody to speak in pretty words to you. You signed up for this to deal a little justice, am I right?” Farlan explained, finishing with a question that I could hardly even move to nod to. “Right?” he asked again when I failed to reply, reminding me that he was a renowned psychologist, and I was a broke law student, on a summer internship, more or less. I realized in that moment that I was horribly underprepared for the big leagues. 

“Yeah,” I managed to eke out, trying to think of some way to get myself out of the hole I was in. I was already so uncomfortable hearing Levi being referred to as “the subject” that I was sweating buckets in the air conditioned living room.

“Okay, let’s continue,” he said softly, hitting play on the recording once more.

_ “Seven: Has the subject shown any signs of average cognitive development? If so, what evidence? _

_ “Eight: Has the subject displayed compassion of any kind? If so, what actions? If not, what steps will the participants take to help the subject do so? _

_ “Nine: Do all participants view themselves and the other participants as acceptable partners in this trial? If not, who is not adequate, and what have they done to display their inadequacy? _

_ “And, last but not least, Ten: Does the subject seem to hold value in his interpersonal relationships? If so, how? If not, what will be done to counteract this?” _

Hanji’s voice paused for a moment in the recording before she continued to speak

_ “Now, this is really more for Mr. Jeager, but you all are required to answer these questions. Make sure it’s an individual assessment, and not a group conversation. Justice Zackly needs all of you to give your own inputs. Other than that, nothing has changed, and people are starting to get nervous, so really put your best effort into the next couple of weeks, or more like  _ months _ for you guys. Sorry,”  _ she laughed _. “I forget about the time difference. Anyway, the husband’s trying to take me on a date tonight, so I’m afraid I’ll be taking my leave,”  _ she said, chuckling to herself while the recording buzzed with noisy feedback.  _ “Have a lovely day, you three. I look forward to hearing from you soon.” _

With that, the recording was over, and I felt a growing pit in my stomach as I tried to fathom how I would answer the questions, and furthermore, how my partners would choose to answer them. They knew that they held my career in their hands, and how they answered the questionnaire could completely sink me. I finally had the courage to look up from my hands at Farlan and Isabel, whose faces were drawn into contemplative frowns.

“You get all that?” Farlan asked, looking over at Isabel, who nodded slowly in response to his question.

“Yeah, all the questions are right here, but when answering these questions, we have to keep in mind that we’re all under oath,” she said grimly, and from the sound of her voice when she spoke, I had a fairly good idea of the conversation that was about to ensue.

“Right,” I said quietly, acknowledging her words, and trying to figure out how I could possibly get out of the situation I had gotten myself into. 

“So, I’m sorry, Eren, but we can’t just lie to the court for you,” Isabel murmured, looking up at me with a blank expression on her face. The beginnings of crows’ feet relaxed around her eyes, and she remained nearly catatonic for the next few seconds, waiting for one of us to speak up. I wasn’t sure what to say, and so sat in the awkward silence waiting for Farlan to start talking.

“Yeah, I mean, Zackly specifically asked about homosexuality, and rule breaking among the three of us,” Farlan explained, as though I hadn’t just listened to the same thing he had. “Sorry, Eren. This is outta our hands.”

I was grasping straw, trying to pull myself back over the edge of the precipice, but I had no defense whatsoever. There was no way I would feel good about putting all the blame on Levi, either, but I knew that I also acted as a powerful resource to him, and my sudden absence would likely do a number on his mental health, so I did what I had to do. I bit back with the bluff of a lifetime. “Yeah, and I mean I’m sure your respective spouses are watching the trials. It’d be a shame for them to hear about your infidelity on national television.”

In reality, I had no evidence to back my claim, but I was out on a limb, and had noticed their growing bond over the last few months, and decided to try to test it. The look on their faces let me know I’d hit a soft spot in their armor. I knew I was onto something, so I pursued it.

“You know, I’d hate to be a homewrecker,” I said bitterly, trying to stab them hard enough with my words that we could come to a truce once they saw that I knew how to defend myself. They thought they had the upper hand, but I had no significant other to go back to, and my lack of attachments only bolstered my confidence. “But if I’m going down, you’re coming down with me. It’s kinda hard to play a game when your star athlete gets benched in the first quarter. You need me, more than I need you. If I went to prison for, what, ten, fifteen years, I’d be able to get back on my feet without worrying about my wife at home thinking of me. While cheating on your wife isn’t technically against the law in most states, it’s a damn good way to ruin a marriage, don’t you think?”

“I-” Farlan started to say, but I cut him off, continuing on my tirade.

“I mean just think of Mrs. Church sitting at home on your couch, waiting for the broadcast of her husband’s testimony to air, just thrilled to hear anything about him at all after he’s been gone for a week. Remember, it’s only been about a week for them. And imagine the look on her face when she hears that her husband’s faithfulness to her lasted less than a week. Imagine how hard she’ll cry when she hears that you’ve swapped her out like a new pair of shoes. I hold cards, too, you guys, and I’ve caught onto more than you’ve realized.” As I concluded, I noticed that my hands were shaking. I had butterflies of adrenaline slicing my innards and filleting them out for everybody to see, but Farlan and Isabel were too busy trying to think of ways to cover their asses to notice, just as I’d suspected they would be. I knew what I had done was cold, and they really had been trying to give me the benefit of the doubt, but I couldn’t just get whisked away, not after I had bet so much on this boy already.

The pressure in the room felt like a nuclear bomb had just gone off, and for a second, I saw violence flash in Farlan’s eyes, but he quickly composed himself. “Well, I see you’ve got a point,” he said, his voice shaking with ire. “And I suppose I’ve never personally witnessed you doing anything inappropriate with Levi,” he trailed off, looking to Isabel, begging with his eyes for her to have some sort of solution to my threat, but she was drawing a blank as well. 

“Alright,” Isabel said sternly, shaking her head at me now that I’d shown where my loyalties lied. “Well, then I guess we’d better get our stories straight, huh?” she suggested, trying to act as though everything was perfectly normal, but her eyes were screaming with a potent anxiety that flooded the room as it poured from her irises.

“Okay, no,” Farlan snapped, resting his palm flat on the table. “We aren’t gonna bite on those terms, Eren. Look. All three of us have things that we’d rather not have aired on television in a public trial. And before anything else, we’re a team, okay? Before any lawyers, or judges, hell, even before Levi himself. The point of being a team is that we try to work together, right?”

“Right,” I mumbled, having lost some of my bravado after the initial confrontation. 

“So, when we work together, that’s optimal, right?” he asked, looking at me with a false calm on his face. I felt guilty for even bringing up their shortcomings, considering I was the only person doing my job wrong, but it was too late to turn back now, and I was just grateful they were willing to work with me as well. It alarmed me how low I’d begun to stoop for this boy, blackmailing my own coworkers in an attempt to stay with him. I knew I’d fucked up, and now it was just time for me to listen.

“Right,” I agreed, nodding in response to his suggestion. 

“Okay, now before I say anything else, let me preface by telling you that this whole little blackmail thing? Can’t happen again. We’re on your side, Eren, and you’re supposed to be on ours, but you haven’t been,” Farlan explained, his voice lowering the longer he talked; he no longer felt like he was being attacked and was slowly relaxing.

“We’re supposed to be on Levi’s side,” I argued, folding my arms.

“Eren, honey, being on somebody’s side doesn’t justify sleeping with an underage manifestation of them. That’s really skeezy. I don’t care that he’s seventeen, kid. I mean, seventeen isn’t eighteen. Seriously, this needs to stop. Wait until his birthday, or better yet, stop sleeping with your client, Eren!” Isabel chimed in.

“I-” I tried to say something, but I knew they were both right. Even though we’d never actually had sex, so to speak, I knew that I was in the wrong. 

“Do you know how long I’d go to prison for, if somebody found out that  _ I _ was sleeping with Levi? I’d be locked away for a long time, and so will you be if this ever gets out,” Isabel explained, and though I already knew everything she was telling me, it felt like everything was really hitting me for the first time. 

“What do you suggest I do?” I asked, genuinely needing advice. “I mean, now that he’s stopped repressing things around me, do you want me to just tell him to seal everything back up? I don’t know that that’s healthy.”

“I haven’t the damndest idea,” Farlan muttered. “We can talk logistics anytime, but remember, we can’t help you if you’re not consistently updating us or asking for help. We don’t know what you need, because we have no idea what you’re out there doing with him most of the time. You need to tell us what you need help with, and that’s entirely our job to help you. Look, Eren, if you need to take a trip to Vegas over the weekend to get everything outta your system, we can arrange that, but really, you need to cut the crap with Levi. We let it slide for a while, but we can’t keep withholding evidence that could be crucial to the case. In this situation, it’s your job to follow the rules, not debate them.”

“Do you guys trust me?” I asked, trying to gauge them a little bit.

“To an extent. Do we think you have bad or malicious intentions? No. Does that mean we trust you to make the right decision? No. Your judgement is pretty clouded, Eren. Look, can we come to a truce right now? I’ll cut you a deal.”

“Go ahead,” I replied, allowing Farlan to state his terms as guilt began to creep into my nerves, wracking my mind and body with the blackening dismay.

“Alright, we will conveniently leave out everything regarding your exact relationship to Levi, as long as you leave out everything regarding our exact relationship to each other,” he said, pausing for a moment, but as soon as I opened my mouth to speak, he spoke again. “I’m not finished yet. You can’t keep taking advantage of a minor, Eren. I don’t even really care that much that it’s homosexual. What really makes me uncomfortable is that he’s still a minor. You should take some time away from this place. Go for a trip. You can take the car; we have a couple of days off. Just put some distance between yourself and this case for the weekend. Go to Vegas, go to San Francisco or something. The whole world is a museum for us right now. Take advantage of it, alright? Maybe a break will put you in the right headspace.”

“But it’ll make every- everybody suspicious that I blew off the dance tomorrow,” I tried to stutter out, but I was beginning to panic. My ears buzzed, pushing ice into my body as I tried to think of any way I could get myself out of the hole I’d dug, but I was realizing more and more that I’d really become stuck between two unmoving forces. There was Levi, who was a whirlwind of a person, a force of nature of his own. On the other side of the pendulum was the law, with morality standing beside it. Sanding at some unmarked location directly between the two warring parts of my brain was a spectre waiting to drop the pendulum and test which side it landed on when it hit the ground. Which opposing force had more gravity? I couldn’t have told anybody if I’d tried. 

“How about this? Go to the dance tomorrow night, but then as soon as it’s over, pack your shit, load it in the car, and go. Come back Sunday night. Get whatever you have to out of your system, and come back focused on the case. Now is not the time or place for you to start breaking laws,” Farlan instructed, and feeling the black shame creep over my skin, I agreed to his terms and we filled out our statements, all of us conveniently leaving out everything regarding Levi’s sexuality, as well as mine. 


	26. Chapter 24

The day after we had filled out our statements was the day of the Sadie Hawkins, and I couldn’t help but be rather shaken up. I had to go on a date with Petra to the dance and act like nothing was the matter, and immediately afterwards, hop in a car and disappear for the rest of the weekend without any explanation. I wondered who would answer the phone when Petra called, and what she would be told upon calling. 

One thing less I had to worry about, however, was the god-awful suit I had worn to the last dance, though if I was being honest, the new suit wasn’t that much better. It was white with black borders and trim on the lapelles and the shoulders. Unfortunately, it was the last decent looking suit in my size, so it was either that or the brown, and I wasn’t trying to look like a defense attorney at a high school dance again, so I seized the opportunity for the more fitting suit.

I freshened up after school and quickly packed my weekend bag, throwing it into the trunk of my vehicle, and returning to the house to finish getting ready for the dance. As the time I’d given Petra drew near, and I was making my way towards the front door, Farlan passed me a small bundle of items tied closed with a rubber band that all fit within the handkerchief wrapped around it.

“Put this in your bag, and don’t lose it. Don’t look at it or show it to anybody until you’re on the road,” he ordered, patting me on the back and shifting his lips upwards into a tired smile. “Look kid, you’re gonna have to do a lot of thinking while you’re on the road, alright, and as your quasi-uncle who has been in similar situations in the past, not with minors, but with self reflective road trips, I’m gonna try and give you something else to think about when the situation with Levi becomes too much to think about. Speaking strictly as a psychologist, if I had my pick for somebody’s mind to study next, it’d be yours. Chew on that for a while, and tell me what you think about them apples,” he snorted. “And remember, Eren, we’re on the same team. If we all can work together and follow the guidelines, we’re gonna save lots’a people,” Farlan concluded. “And, Eren, remember, don’t go making a big scene about this, alright? You’ll be back on Sunday, and you can explain everything to them when you get home,” he said, seeing me off while I backed out of the driveway and began to drive down the road to Petra’s house.

I pulled into her driveway seven minutes early and parked the car, standing from it and walking to the door. I knocked, and almost immediately, the door swung open, revealing Petra in another long, loose hanging, empire waisted dress. She looked lovely, as always, but her expression seemed nervous. “Hey Eren, so, I’m sorry to spring this on you at the last minute, but my father is actually here and he said he needs to meet you before you take me out,” she explained, her fair complexion stained with a raspberry colored blush as she ushered me into her house. “I’m really sorry, again,” she whispered while she led me towards her living room. I had no idea how to act around Petra’s father, as I’d only ever met her mother before. Her father was rather ambiguous up until I saw him sitting in the leather recliner in his living room. 

“So, you must be Eren,” he said, standing and walking over to me, extending a hand, which I gave a firm shake to before I replied.

“That’s me, Sir,” I said politely, hoping I still remembered how to schmooze other people’s parents from my high school days.

“Now what are you looking to do with my daughter tonight, young man?” he asked sternly. He wasn’t a tall man but he was certainly rather robust and sturdy looking. He held himself like he could probably have snapped me in half between a couple of his fingers, and I’d have been lying if I said I wasn’t a little intimidated. 

“Well, I’d like to take her out to get ice cream at the little ice cream place at the south end of town, Sir. And then I’d like to take her to the Sadie Hawkins dance, if that’s alright with you,” I said, hoping he wasn’t noticing how nervous I was. If it was any other night than that one, I likely would have been far more convincing than I felt that night. 

“You were early. Why was that? Did you think you could sneak in a couple of extra minutes with her?” Petra’s father asked, keeping his eyes trained on me, fixed in a scrutinizing glare.

“No, Sir. It’s just that my mother always used to tell me that if you’re early, you’re on time, and if you’re on time, you’re late,” I said, quoting my mother every time she tried to get me out of bed an hour early for school, but not allowing my mind to wander much farther than that. 

“Your mother is a wise woman,” Mr. Ral said sharply, folding his arms and shifting his posture while he continued to size me up.

“Um,  _ was _ , Sir,” I quietly corrected him. “My mother passed away about seven years ago,” I said, which hadn’t been a lie, but it did change the age I would have been when my mother had died, and I knew that was likely something I would have to keep track of. 

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, son,” he said, his eyes softening for a moment, while his words quietly sounded around the room before dissolving into an awkward silence. “Well, I’m gonna give you my permission to take my daughter out tonight young man, but there will be further questioning if there is another date after this, you hear me? Don’t try anything funny, either, or you might as well take a long, high jump at the moon.”

“I’ll take good care of her, Sir,” I assured him, smiling at Petra while she began to drag me towards the front door.

“Get off his case, Dad! You’re so old fashioned,” she groaned loudly, shaking her long red mane while she tried to clear it from her face without releasing my hands.

“Have her home by quarter to eleven, sharp,” he called after me while Petra opened the door and shoved me out of it. “No exceptions.”

“He will! Bye, Dad!” she called over her shoulder before slamming the door behind her, and letting out a loud sigh. “He’s so  _ old _ ,” she lamented. “He was born in twenty-three, so I guess it makes sense. But I knew that if I kept you in there any longer he would have gone off on one of his Navy stories, and we would have been here all night. Totally woulda missed the dance.”

“Your father- so that would mean- because you were born in fifty-nine- so your father would have fought in the second world war?” I asked, a little stunned by that fact, though it would have made sense for the time. 

“Yeah and my older brothers fought in Vietnam. My brother Robbie lost an arm to a landmine,” Petra said, walking ahead of me to the car, not allowing me to comment, but giving me a moment to catch up and open the door for her. She climbed in and I walked around to the driver’s side. “So we’re gonna go for ice cream and meet Levi there so we can give him a ride, right?” she asked when I started the engine.

“Right,” I said quietly, pulling back out of her driveway and towards the main stretch of road out of town. We pulled into the parking lot of the ice cream parlor, and immediately I saw Levi standing just out of sight of Main Street, leaning up against a brick wall and puffing on a cigarette. The legs of his pants were lightly coated with dust from the walk he must have taken to get to the ice cream parlor, and I silently resolved to drive him back to his place before I skipped town. 

I parked and we disembarked from the vehicle, making our way over to where Levi stood, nodding at us in silent greeting when we got close enough to him. 

“What’s up?” I asked while he stood beside us, completely solitary, even in our presence. No matter who he stood with, he always seemed to stand alone, and likely even preferred it that way. 

“Just hanging around waiting for you guys,” he scoffed, looking towards Petra and flashing a small smile. “You look nice, kid.”

“Thanks, man,” she replied. “It’s pretty bomb that you wanted to come to the dance, even though you don’t have a date.”

“Oh, I have a date,” Levi muttered beneath his breath, though I wasn’t sure Petra heard him, but I figured it was probably better that way. I couldn’t be bothered to reprimand Levi for that particular comment in any way, because I had several far heavier things weighing down my mind. We got our ice cream cones and ate them on the way to the dance, pulling into the closest available parking spot to the entrance and cutting the engine. It was difficult to put on a smile for my friends, but thus far I’d managed to do a good job at keeping everything under wraps.

When we got to the ticket table, I was shocked when Levi stepped forward and paid for all of the tickets. I tried to argue with him on it, as I knew his means of income was unreliable to say the least. 

“Levi, it’s okay, I can cover it,” I said quietly while Petra cozied up to my waist, relaxing with her head on my collarbone while I tried to dissuade Levi from taking such an expense. 

“Eren, it’s $7.50,” Levi replied, taking charge of the situation and pushing his money to the chaperone. I felt like I likely could have read further into Levi’s insistence on paying for the tickets, but my mind was already so numb that I wasn’t sure where to start. We wandered into the auditorium and Levi made his way towards one of the corners of the room, pulling up a chair and sitting down while Petra and I began to meander towards the dance floor. It was a rather fast song, which meant that I had no idea what I was doing, and Petra had to lead the dance, swishing her hips and her hair perfectly in time with the upbeat music while I stood mostly stationary with my hands on her waist. My eyes kept wandering towards Levi, but he seemed to be thoroughly absorbed in a small leather bound book he’d seemingly produced from thin air. I felt bad that I couldn’t dance with him, and so in a gesture of solidarity, I made sure he was able to dance with Petra at least a couple of times so that he wasn’t just sitting there all night.

It was strange because even objectively, he was very attractive, but no lonely girl approached him to ask for a dance. It was like he had a certain air about him that acted as a repellent among the other girls in our grade. He didn’t follow trends because he couldn’t afford to, and his good looks seemed to be lost on the girls that had a boy with long shiny hair and name brand clothing in mind. 

About midway through the festivities, a totally plastered Riko approached us, followed by Oluo, who staggered a couple of paces behind her. “We’re gonna ditch this place and go to that lookout spot, if you guys are interested in coming with,” she drawled lazily, but Petra shook her head.

“You guys shouldn’t be driving anywhere,” she laughed, pushing on Riko’s shoulder until the taller girl lost her balance and fell backwards into her boyfriend, who sloppily caught her shoulders and stood her back up. 

“And anyway, why would we wanna follow you up to a lookout spot when all three of us are able minded enough to know that we probably won’t even see you leave your truck a single time? You guys’ll be too busy getting each other off to notice we aren’t there. Just like you’ve been too busy getting wasted to look for us until just now,” Levi said matter of factly, narrowing his eyes in scrutiny at the dazed couple that stood before us. 

“Sorry about that,” Oluo offered, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I’m not mad. I was just pointing it out,” Levi said with the cold blase that I’d gotten so used to. He seemed to be more emotive when we were spending time alone with each other, but not by much of a margin. 

“Right,” Riko said, while she wobbled drunkenly on her feet. “Well, we’re gonna go somewhere else, then. You’re welcome to follow us.”

“It’s alright, I think we’re all okay here,” Petra said, looking first at Levi and then at me. “Unless either of you wanted to go with them,” she trailed off, looking back to Levi and keeping her gaze fixed on him, almost like she wanted him to go with the other two so that she could snag some alone time with me, but Levi shook his head and cracked a crooked smirk across his face.

“No, it’s okay, I can stay with these two idiots and make sure they don’t get into as much trouble as you two are in,” he said, gesturing towards the drunk couple that wavered for a moment longer before disappearing into the crowds of students, wishing us all a good night over their shoulders while they made for the exit of the building. 

Petra took Levi for another spin on the dance floor, seemingly tired of my lack of talent, and so I waited for them in the corner where Levi had been sitting, but Petra managed to pull me onto the dance floor for the last dance of the night.

“So, Eren,” she said quietly while we swayed back and forth to the rhythm of the song. “I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about something.” 

“Sure,” I permitted, allowing her to speak while the song continued to play. 

“I- well, I think you’re a stand up guy, and you always know how to brighten my day, and I guess I really like you,” she said, her voice shaking as the anxiety flooded her expression. I had to react quickly, but I had no clue what to tell her. That remark had come so far out of left field for me that I had no responses prepared. 

“Well, Petra, I think you’re an absolute ray of sunshine, yourself, but I’m afraid that as far as romantic feelings go, I’m not sure I can reciprocate in the way that you need me to,” I responded about as eloquently as I could have in the given situation. Really, I should have been expecting it and preparing a more eloquent answer for her, but letting her down still managed to spike her with anxiety, and the fear of rejection that I was scared to make her feel. 

“Oh,” she said softly, rocking silently with me back and forth for a while before looking up at me with what seemed to be a makeshift confidence. “Is there a reason? Did my dad offend you with the comment about your mother? I can tell him not to-”

“Oh my God, no. Your dad is adorable,” I said, watching as she cocked her head quizzically and lifted an eyebrow at me.

“I guess that’s one way to put it,” she scoffed, shaking her head while she looked back down at her feet again.

“But seriously, you have to listen to me, Petra,” I said, hoping to fix some of the damage I had dealt to her self confidence. “You’re a beautiful, smart, funny girl with a great head on her shoulders, and you’d make any one of these guys the luckiest loser on the planet by going on a date with him. You’re worth the whole lot of these girls put together. I’m just not the guy you should go falling in love with, alright? I’ll be here as a friend whenever you need me, but-” I started to say, but trailed off, my heart breaking at the crestfallen posture her body had taken. 

“But, I’m not your type,” she finished softly, trying to mask the disappointment in her voice while she regarded me.

“It isn’t even that, Petra. Seriously, you’re amazing. I don’t even know what my type even is,” I said, and for a moment, I considered backpedaling and agreeing to go out with her. A short montage played in my head, depicting a rather normal life. I knew that I’d have been relatively happy with a girl like Petra by my side, until the point that Levi had opened my eyes for me. He had done me in, in terms of being satisfied sexually with women. I knew that from then on, life with a woman would be at least partly unsatisfactory, and it was at least partly his fault. 

“Just not me, then,” she said, trying to comprehend why I seemed to like her a lot but wasn’t willing to get involved with her romantically. I couldn’t just explain that I’d been getting with Levi when nobody was looking. I had no idea how she’d react. 

“Not even just you. If any other girl asked me out right now, I’d turn them down. If anything, you’re the girl I’d be most likely to say yes to. A famous supermodel could march in here right now and ask me out, and I’d still tell her no. I’d tell her no before I told you no, does that make sense?” I asked, trying my hardest to get her to understand that she was not flawed in any way, but I would never be able to be truly intimate with her or any girl like her, or even any girl at all. Sure, I’d make it work if I had to, but that would have been no way to live our lives. I would scrape along, but I knew I’d never be able to provide her with what she needed.

“Yeah, so, you’re just not wanting to date anybody right now, but it isn’t me?” she confirmed, waiting for my response before the muscles in her body began to relax. 

“Exactly. Of course it isn’t you, Petra. You’re wonderful, and have been nothing but good to me the entire time I’ve been here. You took me under your wing when I didn’t know anybody, you introduced me to your friends when I had none, and you always make sure to try and include me in things that you do, even if it’d be easier to just leave me at home. You’re remarkably level headed and brave, and everything that happened Friday night only did more to solidify that idea of you in my head, and I would drop everything and start dating you in a heartbeat if I felt like I could give you what you needed.”

“I- I understand. Friends still, yeah? This isn't gonna make things awkward, is it?” she asked, her brown eyes wide while the song drew to a close.

“Friends forever, Petra. Friends for life, and nothing has to be awkward. I’ll still be Eren, and you’ll still be Petra, right? Unless we’re trading and nobody told me. I’d be a pretty ugly Petra, and you’d be kinda a short Eren, huh?” I joked, trying to lighten the mood. She cracked a playful grin and smacked my shoulder. 

“You’re so good at making people smile, Eren. Never stop doing that, alright?” 

“As long as you never stop smiling,” I grinned, wrapping my arm around her shoulder and leading her off the dance floor and back towards Levi. That dance had been almost nothing like the last one. This one seemed to be far more tactical, whereas the other one, I felt like an absolute fish out of water. I was spending this dance practically working damage control, as the dance was already over, and I hadn’t had a moment alone with Levi. I had sort of been relying on Riko and Oluo to distract Petra for a few minutes so I could sneak off somewhere with Levi, but their absence managed to completely derail Levi’s previously stated plans. We filed out of the auditorium while the pep squad began slowly folding chairs back up and tearing down streamers and by the time that we reached the car, the banner across our high school sign had been taken down, folded and was now being hauled inside. 

I drove Petra back to her house and got her home fifteen minutes early, which seemed to impress her father who had waited up for us, just as I’d suspected he would have. He put his cigar out and shook my hand again, giving me permission to take Petra out again if I so desired. He saw me as a perfectly respectable young man, and I was at least glad that I’d gotten his approval for no other reason than that it came as a massive boost to my self esteem on a night when I was taking all I could get. When I climbed back into the car, I saw that Levi had gotten himself buckled into the passenger seat, as opposed to sitting in the back, where he had been. I felt a quiet comfort at the change in his seating, because I knew that if I had harmed anything in our relationship by not paying him enough mind, it was likely not irreparable damage.

“So, I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to sneak away with you,” I said quietly while I began the drive out of town. 

“It’s okay,” he responded in a whisper that was nearly drowned out by the sound of the engine. “We’re going to your place, right?” he asked, and it broke my heart to have to tell him that that wasn’t where we were going. I wished I could have given him some kind of stability that night, but I had none to spare. 

“I- I’m sorry. I can’t tonight,” I answered him, ashamed that I had to tell him no. 

He let that sink in for a moment before we rolled into a red light, and he turned and faced me full on before asking, “Are you okay? Something feels really off right now,” he said, and in that moment, I was blown away. The amount of energy it must have taken him to not only observe my actions but also my apparent mood, and then for him to be empathetic enough to actually ask me about it, was astounding. It was then that the thought occurred to me that if I had left him that night and never came back, he likely wouldn’t have harmed a fly. It was a bold statement, I knew that as soon as the thought crossed my mind, but it was a hunch that I would now have to prove to be true once the year and a half I had left with him was up.

“I-” I began, considering lying to him, but I already had to do enough lying in my day-to-day life, that I hated the idea of lying to him unless I absolutely had to. “Actually, I haven’t really been doing all that hot.”   
  


“Why’s that?” he asked, turning back to face the road once the light turned green. 

“I’ve just got a lot on my mind. I got into a disagreement with my aunt and uncle, and I’m not sure I’m gonna take the car back tonight,” I said, trying to let him know that I would be absent for the weekend in the most inconspicuous way possible. 

“Where would you go on a full tank o’ gas?” he asked. “Because I don’t think I’d be able to go anywhere.”

“I dunno, I just need to clear my mind,” I explained while I continued to drive out of town. 

“I just don’t think I’d get very far without turning around. It’s a big world out there, Eren, a big world with nothing out there of any interest to me,” he offered, and I didn’t overlook the fact that that was the first time he had expanded on information he had given me without being asked. Despite the excitement that taunted me just out of my grasp, I could only feel how lost he must have felt, especially in contrast to how lost I was feeling at the exact same moment. 

“Levi, as somebody that has seen some of the great big world out there already, I just wanna tell you right now that the world has everything to offer you, but you just have to feel like you’re the one it’s being offered to,” I was quick to say, immediately looking to brighten his grim paradigm.

“Even to some bum fuck nobody with no skills other than working on cars and looking at dead things?” Levi asked, and I had to take a moment to compose myself. I hadn’t expected him to have such an inaccurate self evaluation. 

“Don’t you understand that you’re not who you’re describing?” I blurted out before I could stop myself, but then was at a complete loss for words.

“I’d say I did a pretty good job,” he argued. “I mean, it isn’t like I know very much about writing, so I could never be a poet; I can’t paint for shit, so art isn’t my thing, either; I’m just some broke kid living in a train car, Eren. There’s nothing remarkable about me. I wouldn’t fit into the outside world, because I don’t belong there. I don’t belong anywhere-” he said, but before he could continue, I pulled the car to a screeching halt in the middle of the highway. “What are you-” he started to ask, but before he could even finish his question, I was kissing him. 

Once my lips had shut him up, they lingered on his for a moment longer before I pulled away. “You don’t get it, Levi. And there’s no way for me to possibly explain it to you, but if I ever hear you talking like that again, I will absolutely punch you in the face,” I said, softly at first, but the last part of my statement came out far more sternly than I’d been expecting. I wanted to shout at him and tell him that he belonged wherever I was, but I was afraid I'd have scared him off, and barring that, the letdown of me leaving forever after graduation would only be harder for him if I allowed him to become more attached to me. Levi’s eyes were wide with the shock of everything that had just happened to him in the last ninety seconds, but something told me that despite everything I wasn’t saying, he managed to understand.

The rest of the drive was mostly quiet, save for Levi reminding me which dirt turn off of the lonely dark highway was his. “You don’t have to pull in all the way. I broke some glass in front of my house and you wouldn’t get very far with slashed tires,” he explained, and I wondered how the glas had gotten broken but was too overwhelmed to ask. 

“So I guess this is it, then,” I murmured, looking out at the stars that twinkled over the desert, waiting to be caught by somebody, and bottled up and sold in gift shops, but the sky was the last untameable being in the whole world. It would never be bottled up and sold in gift shops, because the closer you got to it, the farther away from it you were. An enticing, deceptive beauty that could never be held or owned by anybody. 

“I guess so,” he whispered, looking up at me one last time before climbing out of the car. “I’ll see you at school, right?”

“Absolutely, and I’ll tell you all about my drive in shop class,” I grinned, reaching out of the station wagon after him and catching his hand just as it was passing the threshold of the passenger side door. I gave it a single squeeze that, in that moment, was more powerful than anything else I could have given him. “Hey. Go easy on yourself, okay?”

“I’ll do my best. Keep on truckin’, Eren,” Levi said when I released his hand. He closed me back into my metal prison. After watching him climb into his train car, a metal prison of his own, I pulled back out onto the highway with no destination in mind. The only thing I could think about was that Levi was exactly like the sky. The closer we were, the farther away I felt from him. 


	27. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT PLZ READ: Alright you guys. This is the last chapter you're gonna get before I go on my hiatus. Lotta my family has birthdays in October, so I am gonna be pretty busy. If you seek more reading material, all the other books in the Just Five Days series is on wattpad for your personal perusal. Book 3 isn't finished yet, but the original sequel and the prequel are, so if in this month you find yourself at a loss for something to read, Go check out my wattpad:  
> @Ackermans_Love_420

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT: There likely won't be another chapter until much later in October. Barring that, November 1st, I'll make sure to have something for you gremlins. Later.
> 
> Author's note: This chapter is gonna stress all of you the fuck out. See you in a month. Kisses.

Driving until dawn through the lonely desert, my brain too fried to really process the events of the last couple of days yet, I decided that Vegas would be more attainable for the two days I would be gone. I was easily able to find a small motel that was about a twenty minute walk from the strip. I took off my jacket and tie, walking quickly into the dimly lit lobby and approaching the front desk. Using the cash in my wallet, I tried to book a hotel room, and luckily, it was a small enough motel that they didn't ask for ID, as my driver's license said that I was sixteen years old, and had they asked to see it, I would not have been able to book a room.

As that thought crossed my mind, I realized with a loud sigh that I would hardly be able to participate in the majority of the tourist attractions. I felt so strange; if the hotel had tried to ID me, that would have cost me my ability to rent the room, but it also would have meant that they didn't think I was old enough to be renting hotel rooms. It was a certain disgust I felt twisting around in my gut that the rest of the world seemed to see me for my actual age, while I had spent the last couple of months trying to come on to a real child.

By the time I had locked myself into my room, I was nearly in hysterics. I had begun to feel tears slowly slip down my face as soon as I closed the door, and I could feel panic tensing my muscles and forcing my lungs to remain stationary so that I couldn't draw breath. It was like every time I took a breath, somebody dunked my head in water. I felt a nausea creeping into my stomach, and I had to sit down before much longer, feeling lightheaded from the lack of oxygen. I wanted to scream, and cry, and throw up. I had touched a minor, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn't recognize the man that stared back at me. Long gone was the cocky law student that trusted his own know-how. My fingers locked themselves into the scalp of my shaggier, grown-out and I was using all my available willpower to avoid yanking my hair right out of my head.

"I'm a monster, what did I do?" I said, my voice a frantic pant while my lungs still struggled for air. I could feel my head spinning, like I was tossing it around the room like a boomerang, and each time it made a full revolution, it pulled harder, trying to take my body with it into orbit. Even gravity didn't feel right. My limbs felt heavy and cold, and it was getting increasingly difficult not to burst into body-wracking sobs. "Where did it go wrong?" I asked myself aloud. "When did I get so fucking evil?"

I had no answers for myself other than the fact that I knew that I hadn't always been so atrocious. Not until I met Levi had I ever looked twice at a minor, and, then I couldn't stop looking at him, but whether or not he had clothes on had nothing to do with it. I couldn't get him out of my head, no matter who else I tried to think about. His eyes looked like they were cut from a fresh block of ice, cold and captivating, but what I really couldn't get enough of was his smile. Having seen a genuine smile on his face only maybe a handful of times, I was slowly getting to know each crease around his eyes when they lit up, and the contagious joy that permeated from him when he smiled.

I had no idea how he was anywhere near related to the man I'd met in the courthouse only a few months prior. They had similar personality traits, and physical attributes, but this younger version of Levi was so full of light, even when he was convinced that wearing lampshades would protect him. I could see the dim flicker, even when his guard was up. He had the ability to come out of this whole trial a well rounded, comfortable person leading a mostly normal life. I knew that he'd likely need treatment for preexisting trauma later down the line, but the way he was right then was set up for a really good life. If I could keep him where he was at, and perhaps try to get him to cut back on the mystery drugs, he would easily succeed in whatever he set his mind to.

I could feel my heart rate slow as my mind began to calm, leaving me with a limited amount of ways to spend my day. Not wanting to procrastinate, I opened my bag to grab my toiletries, and found the handkerchief parcel Farlan had given me at the surface of all of the items. Curious as to what exactly was in the piece of cloth, and far enough away from Duplaine that I felt like I could examine the contents without repercussions, I pulled the rubber band off from around the corners of the coth, and resting inside was a driver's license with my legitimate age on it and a crisp one-hundred dollar bill to add to my small fortune in "allowance money". Instead of being born in '73, however, the license said that I was actually born in '51, which was the year my father had been born, and I could only cringe at the sick feeling that gave me in comparison with the year that Levi was born. If we were both ten years older, the difference would have been more negligible, but while he was a minor, it was problematic, to say the least.

I decided that since I did in fact have a valid driver's license, there wasn't any use wasting my trip, so I changed my clothing and armed myself with some brochures that rested on a small rack in the lobby, just waiting for an eager tourist to snatch them up. Feeling in my pocket for the room key, I let out a sigh of relief as I felt it right beside my car keys. Once I had climbed into my car, I began to leaf through the indiscriminate stack of brochures I held in my hands while I slipped my key into the ignition, not quite willing to start the engine yet, but more than willing to think about it. While I leafed through the amount of casinos, and bars and clubs of every kind, I finally began to register where I was. I was in the City of Sin, and I wondered what state I'd leave it in.

I decided that my first stop would be Circus Circus, and I would work my way down the strip as the day progressed, moving to Royale Las Vegas, and then to Stardust, and further on if I had time, playing as many different tables as I could, not really gambling for the chance of winning the jackpot, but more for the opportunity to distract myself from the oppressive thoughts that floated like storm clouds in my mind. Having decided how the next few hours would go, I started the engine and checked the mirror, looking at the beginnings of stubble on my chin and cheeks, making me feel a little bit like Kurt Cobain, though I wouldn't be able to express that to anybody for a long time, as nobody would have had any idea who I was talking about until the early nineties.

I pulled out and drove to the spot on the map I had grabbed that marked the first casino on my list. I parked and locked the car when I exited, figuring that big cities were big cities, regardless of what decade it was. Upon up close observation, however, Las Vegas wasn't quite as big as I remembered it had been from the trip during the spring break after my twenty-first birthday, though I was now about 20 years before that, and though I was mostly used to the 1970s again, it took me a moment to process that Las Vegas wasn't the Las Vegas I had been to, and would have to rely on guide books just as heavily as I had during my last trip.

I made it to Circus Circus, and quickly realized I was a certain type of over-tired that was beginning to severely impair my judgement. Still, I walked into the casino, instead of just driving back to the hotel and trying to catch up on some sleep. I was already there, and I'd be damned if I wasn't going to play a couple rounds of blackjack.

As soon as I stepped into the large circus tent of a casino, I was struck by how enticing the climate control was. It was never too hot in a Las Vegas casino, I remembered, relieved while I sauntered into the dark room. In reality, it wasn't all that dark, but there were no windows except those that were a part of the doors, and they were practically blacked out with the hopes that customers would lose track of time while they spun their savings away on the slots. I approached the first green, semicircular table I saw that had a 3/2 payout, and sat at a stool beside an older gentleman that looked to be in about the same shape I was. He had heavy dark bags under his eyes, and his cheeks were gaunt and hollow, his five-o'clock shadow nearly matching mine. He wore a rather nice business suit and gave me a wan smile while I took my seat.

"Hey, kid," he grunted, taking a sip of watered-down whiskey with partially melted ice cubes floating transparently through the amber colored liquid. There was a ring of condensation on the edge of the table where the glass had been, and to that circle, the glass returned once the man had taken a drink from it.

"Hi," I murmured in response while the croupier did a quick once-over of the nearly empty casino, looking in case anybody else decided to join our game. It was early enough in the morning that most of the tourists were not yet awake, and almost everybody that sat at tables or slot machines looked like they were local, and knew exactly what they were doing.

"So the minimum bet is three dollars," the dealer explained while I placed a twenty dollar bill on the table, as well as four quarters that I had resting at the bottom of my wallet, happy that I could evenly divide my number of rounds into the cash I'd set down. He pushed 21 white chips in my direction, while the man beside me held quite a few red and green chips in addition to a handsome stack of white chips. He seemed to hunch over them, like he was afraid that somebody would try to take them from him when he wasn't looking. "Alright, everyone ready?" the croupier asked, lifting an eyebrow. We nodded, slipping our respective bets into our circles and watching while the man behind the table dealt us out.

It was mesmerizing, how quickly he managed to flip the cards onto the table, as I was used to playing blackjack with my drunken peers, betting with whatever pocket change we carried with us. Vegas was a whole different breed. I felt like some child who had gotten lost, and didn't belong in such a place, but I was invested in the game that was playing out in front of me, so I pushed the self pity to the back of my mind and looked at the cards that were out on the table. My cards tallied up to seventeen, with the nine of hearts and the eight of clubs, and the man beside me sat with a king and a three, and the dealer's top facing card was a seven. It was the older man's turn first, and he tapped the table as an indication for another card. It was a queen that the dealer laid down on his set, and he grumbled quiet curses at his upsetting bust, just two too many points to have earned back his bet.

I chose to stay, swiping my hand through the air above my cards to indicate to the dealer that I didn't want any more cards than the ones I had. The dealer then flipped his bottom card, and on it was a three, requiring the dealer to hit again, getting a six, and having to hit one final time with a jack. That was two busts, and I was the last man standing. I was relieved to watch the dealer push three white chips in my direction. He cleared the cards, and we were given the opportunity to place different bets. I upped to four white chips instead of three, in case I needed to split it up for any reason. I busted on my second hit, first having a two and a three, and then getting an eight and a ten, while the man beside me got a twenty. I had been expecting him to win, but the dealer hit on a soft seventeen and made it to twenty one. In my head I calculated that I had just lost a dollar of what I had initially put on the table, and would have to remember to keep track of the money I spent while I sat there. It would be so easy to forget that these chips had monetary value, and I would have to try my best not to lose money.

We bet again, and I bet another four chips to see if I could win my lost money back, which I did. Both of us beat the dealer with eighteens, and quietly shared mutual congratulations with one another before moving onto the next round.

By the time I left the table, I had made seventy-five dollars, which I found thoroughly impressive, considering I only had put down twenty-one. I felt rather bourgeois holding ninety-six dollars that I had won at a casino in Las Vegas, ready to hop down to the next casino to see what they had to offer.

Almost directly in spite of my lack of energy, I pushed on through the rest of the day, and was even able to hold off on drinking until happy hour, which I hadn't expected to do at all. I had gotten good at keeping track of cards, which was easier to do when it was a single deck game, so on average, I was making more than I was losing at most tables, and by the end of the night, as I was driving back to my hotel after having spent the last hour of my gambling time drinking only water until I was sobered up enough to drive back, but all day, I had been trying to hide from the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that wanted to know who I was and what I'd done with the old Eren Jaeger, that wouldn't have wanted to have sex with a seventeen year old boy. I had it figured in my head that if I had been able to change in the first place, I would also be able to change back. I just needed to push myself in the right direction.

I wasn't sure whether it had occurred to me before or after they came into view, but as I turned off of Las Vegas Boulevard and began to weave through the streets with less foot traffic, I came across three or four women working corners, and had the good sense to park on the curb next to one of them and roll down my passenger window. I waved at her and she smiled at me, strutting up towards the car in a ridiculously tight mini skirt and knee-high go-go boots.

"Hey, Sugar," she said, her voice soft and sultry, like she was no stranger to that particular kind of work. Her voice had a very slight southern twang to it that seemed out of place. She stood at about five-foot-five, and had shoulder length blonde hair and icy blue eyes that made her painted red lips pop, even in the dim lighting from the streetlamps.

"Hi, there," I said awkwardly, never having paid for sex before, but willing to try anything to reset my brain back to the way it was before. I had to be able to focus on my work without breaking the law anymore, and at that point, I was desperate, ready to try anything that could release all of this pent-up energy. It occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, the attraction I was feeling for Levi was not a result of me being gay, but rather a result of him having been the first person to touch me in more than three months. I could certainly recognize the woman standing before me as being a very attractive creature, though I wasn't sure if that was because I wanted to have sex with her, or just thought she was pretty. I figured that either way, I would find out before the night was over.

"So, what are you lookin' for tonight?" she asked, leaning against the door to the station wagon, emphasizing the shape of her hips in contrast with her narrow waist.

"I'm gonna be one hundred percent honest with you, I've never done this before, and really, I have no idea even where to start, or what to ask for," I explained honestly.

"From outta town, Honey?" she asked, and I nodded sheepishly, totally out of my comfort zone. "Okay, lemme give you the menu then," she said with a coy smile and a wink in my direction. "Handjob is $45, blowjobs and boob jobs are $60, intercrural is $70, good ol' fashioned is a hundred, anal is one-twenty, and anything else, we can work out on the spot," she explained, walking her painted red fingernails across the open window on the passenger side. "Oh, and if a job takes more than an hour, it's an extra dollar every two minutes."

"How about the regular old fashioned? Does it cost extra if I were to take you to my hotel room?" I asked, cringing at my lack of street skills.

"Yeah, that adds twenty bucks," she said, and I had always assumed hiring a sex worker would have been more expensive, but then I remembered that the dollar had inflated quite a bit since the nineteen seventies, and a hundred dollars was worth far more now than it would be worth in the future, so I figured it probably balanced out pretty well for the times.

"Alright, well hop on in, I've got money to pay you with," I laughed nervously, feeling so absolutely out of place, which was causing anxiety to bubble up in my throat and stomach again. "Er, well, yeah, um, if you want," I added, because I felt the need to clarify that if she didn't want to, she was more than welcome to leave if she didn't wanna hook up with a rookie, but I figured money was green no matter who it came from, and so relaxed a little upon admitting her into my car.

"What's your name, Baby?" she asked, reaching across the center console and resting her hand on my arm.

"My name's Eren," I said, nearly trembling with anxiety that had flooded me all over again once I pulled into the hotel parking lot. "What's yours?"

"Dinah," she said while I walked around the car to get the door for her, anxiety and numbness battling each other for control of my head, and honestly, I didn't like either option. I had been pushing any thought of Levi to the back of my mind, trying to ignore him for the time being. "You're about as green as they come, you know that?" she laughed, tucking her hair behind her ears while we walked towards the front door of the motel.

"I tried to warn you," I replied, trying to force out a laugh as well, but it came out more like a strangled wheeze, which only embarrassed me further.

"Well, at least you've got a sense of humor about it," she giggled while I fished the room key from my pocket and unlocked the door, allowing her to walk in ahead of me while I followed behind.

"At least," I echoed, letting out a sigh and sitting on the edge of the bed, slowly untying my shoes and methodically placing them in front of the nightstand.

"And I have rubbers, so you don't have to worry if you don't have your own," she said, walking past me so closely that I could smell her perfume as strongly as I could have smelled gasoline at the gas pump. It wasn't a bad smell, it was just a strong smell, which made perfect sense in hindsight, considering she would likely have reapplied it after each client, but it confused me in the heat of the moment. She rested her purse on the other nightstand and pulled out a small square package that I recognized all too well. She slipped the condom into her back pocket and made her way back over to me. "Okay, so now is the part where you pay me, so that you can't jip me after you finish."

"Oh! Of course!" I exclaimed, still far too riled up to be any kind of aroused while my heart threatened to beat a hole right through my chest. I fished through my wallet and pulled out some of my earnings, counting out one hundred and thirty dollars and handing it to her, before she counted it as well and handed me a ten dollar bill back. "No, you keep that," I said, passing the tender back to her again. "Think of it as a thank you for putting up with me," I explained, watching as she pushed the cash into her bag, before returning to me again and standing between my legs, pushing her fingers through my hair.

"You don't have anything to be nervous about," she murmured, tipping my chin up towards her face with the tip of her index finger. "Just lemme take care of you," she said, leaning over me and pressing a kiss to my lips, and half-heartedly, I reciprocated. Slowly, the kisses began to build, and she moved from standing to sitting on my lap, with her legs resting on the outside of mine. This girl looked like she had just stepped off of a porno magazine, and somehow, even with her sitting on my lap, trying to make out with me, all I could think about was Levi. It was then that I knew I'd made a mistake. Every muscle in my body froze, and it felt like the blood in my veins had been replaced by ice water.

"Um," I murmured, pulling back and looking at Dinah. "I'm sorry, you're a really pretty girl, but I can't do this."

"Is there a girl back home?" she asked, not even skipping a beat in her response when she climbed off of me, walking to her purse again.

"I- well, um- well, there's something like that," I explained.

"I normally don't do refunds, but I didn't even have time to take my shirt off, so I'll let you off the hook," she offered, holding the money I'd given her between a couple of her fingers, but I shook my head.

"No, you keep it, thanks for your time," I said quietly, now even more embarrassed than I was before. I had totally just wasted this woman's night, and I wasn't sure anything would have convinced me otherwise.

"Well, you've still got about fifty-five minutes, if you need to get something off your chest. Cross my heart I won't tell," she winked, sitting beside me on the bed and drawing an 'X' over the left side of her chest with her index finger.

"I think I might just take you up on that," I said, willing to take counsel from whoever would give it.

"Tell me about this girl back home then, what makes her special?" she asked, and I wasn't sure whether to correct her or not with the pronouns, but I decided that the things I needed to talk about would only make sense if she understood that Levi was a boy.

"Um, well, actually, that's kinda my problem. It isn't a _girl_ back home," I said quietly, hoping I hadn't just scared her off.

"Mmm, so you're in the denial part of this whole thing, huh? Trying to prove to yourself that you like women? You're not alone," she nodded almost clinically, like she was looking at me and seeing textbook pages for somebody in my situation. "That's actually pretty common. I'll have guys sometimes that come around looking for whatever, and at some point during the process, they'll tell me that they're into men and trying not to be. It's easy to be honest with hookers, Honey, because, odds are, you'll probably never see me again, and I'll probably never see you again, so what does it matter anyway? The whole point of my job is to get you off, and so, if ya wants the best experience, you gotta be honest with me. And sometimes the best experience is not having sex at all, but just having somebody that will listen to you. I don't do it often, but I'm never opposed to it," she explained, tapping her fingernails against her exposed kneecap.

"Well, whatever it is, I really appreciate you being so understanding," I replied, relaxing a little bit as it clicked in my head that I was not the first person to do what I was doing, nor would I be the last. "If you need to go at any time, feel free, okay? I don't wanna waste time you could be using to secure income."

"Don't even worry about that," she said resolutely. "Now, tell me about this boy."

"Well," I started, trying to think of things that I could tell her about him without revealing too much about the case. "He's quiet most of the time, but pretty sarcastic when he does decide to speak up. Sometimes he's a little bit too honest, but I've kinda grown to appreciate it. He's a very hard worker, and when he commits to something, he sees it through until the end. He's fixing up an old Harley Davidson bike right now, and I wouldn't have any idea where to even start on a project like that."

"Wow, that's pretty bitchin' that he's restoring his own bike," Dinah exclaimed, her eyes lighting up while she regarded me.

"Yeah, he's pretty smart. And y'know, he's got his own issues, but, I mean, everybody does, and honestly, I wouldn't have him any other way. I don't even mind talking with him about problems we're having, because he's belligerent and ornery, but he always takes the time to understand what I'm trying to say to him. He hears me like I've never felt heard before. Even if something doesn't really resonate with him, he's still there to listen to me talk about it," I explained, allowing my mind to finally wander back to Levi, embracing him fully with my thoughts. "I could spend hours just sitting in silence with him, doing nothing in particular. I just like to _be_ with him. And his smile makes you just happy to be alive, you know?"

"How are you feeling without him right now? Ignoring any tiff or what-have-you that you might have gotten into before you left, how do you feel without him?" she asked, getting right down to the important questions.

"Well it isn't really that _we_ got into it or anything, but there's just a lot of pressure from the rest of the world telling us we shouldn't be together, and albeit I'd say probably half of it is justified, maybe more," I said, hoping she wouldn't catch that I'd dodged her question, but alas, I had never been a very talented liar. Even with Farlan and Isabel, I couldn't spend long lying to them, and lying to the courts nearly gave me a heart attack, though I had done my best to mask that, as not to appear weak in front of the coworkers I had tried to blackmail.

"You didn't answer my question. Obviously, if you don't want to, just say so, and I'll stop asking," she said, including an out this time, in case I decided to opt for it, but I didn't.

"Well, I guess, if I'm being honest, I'm feeling kinda empty. I came out here to try and clear my head, but the longer I'm here, the more lost I feel," I told her, staring glumly at the floor, while my head was consumed with thoughts of Levi.

"Do you want my advice?" she asked, lifting a thin eyebrow at me and wearing a crooked smirk across her lips. She adjusted the thin straps of her halter top while she waited for me to respond.

"Please, I'll take anything I can get," I nearly begged, desperately needing an outside opinion from a neutral third party.

"Look, I'm not here to come from a place of judgement, right?" Dinah reminded me while I nodded in quiet understanding. "But I think you need to tell this guy that you love him. The way you talk about him is so loving, like you were talking about your wife or something. That's how we all wanna be talked about. He's lucky to have you," she concluded with a low, gentle voice, the cute southern accent only adding to the sentiment.

"You're serious?" I asked, gawking a little by the time she'd finished speaking. I had figured she would have told me to leave him, or to make sure to keep it private, but she didn't say any of that. Instead, she told me to tell that fucker that I love him.

"Eren, I don't think I've _been_ more serious about giving advice," she said, folding her arms and glancing at the wall, staring off into space for a moment before coming back to. "Sorry, I guess I lost myself a little right there."

"What should I do if he doesn't love me, too?" I asked, but was immediately interrupted by her hand suddenly covering my mouth.

"Don't even think like that. If he doesn't, then you can cross that bridge when you get there," she assured me, moving her hand from clamped over my mouth to patting my shoulder. "But I have a hunch that he probably loves you even more than you love him. It's the quiet ones that you gotta keep an eye out for, you know. They'll never tell you how they're feeling unless you ask them. Sounds to me like you need to ask him."

"Yeah, you're probably, right about that," I said quietly, placating her, while I tried to list off the reasons why it would be a terrible idea to tell Levi I loved him, starting first and foremost with the question of whether or not I did actually love him, but I could hardly function. I was so sleep deprived that making that mental list was nearly impossible.

"I can hear in your voice that you don't believe me, but I'm serious, if you haven't told him yet, you should probably tell him soon. You look like you're about to pop, Hun," she explained. "Normally I can guess when people are gonna back out of a session, and while you were certainly nervous enough to, I wasn't entirely sure, because you are _so_ tense. Usually tense people go through with it to _relieve the tension_ , you know?" she asked rhetorically, resting for a moment in silence before continuing. "Like I said at the beginning, who am I to judge you or your life choices? I think that you should do what you think is best, but I would strongly advise being open with how you feel with this guy. It'll probably end up helping you both in the long run."

"Thank you," I said, my voice hardly louder than a whisper.

"No problem. Get some good sleep, cuz you're looking a little sleepy," she said, being far more polite than she could have been; I looked like death and I knew it. "Drive home careful tomorrow. Thanks for the time, Eren," she instructed, thanking me and standing up and pulling her purse over her shoulder.

"Thank _you_ for the time, Dinah," I replied, standing and reaching for my keys. "Do you need me to drive you anywhere?" I asked, but she shook her head.

"I know my way back. I been here before," she assured me, shooting me a short, warm smile. "I appreciate it, though."

"Anytime. Keep on truckin', Man," I said while she made her way for the door, thinking of Levi while his words left my lips, even just repeating things he'd said before making me feel closer to him.

"You too, take care," she replied, disappearing down the hallway and out of my life forever. Now, I had even more to think about in such a short time. I hadn't been able to sleep well, because I'd been so panicked the last couple days that sometimes it took hours for me to reach baseline again, and other times, like the night prior, I never did calm down and try to get some rest. I just hammered all the way through, only stopping for gas during the five hour drive, and then staying awake for another eighteen hours or so after that, casino and bar hopping until I didn't feel like I could drink any more without passing out.

Fortunately, as soon as I locked the door behind Dinah when she left, and returned to my bed, sleep managed to do a pretty decent job of creeping up on me. I turned out the lights, and one minute I was awake, and the next minute, I was not, and then after what only felt like a couple more seconds it was nearly ten in the morning, and, taking note of my mild hangover, I quickly showered and changed into my final pair of clothes, eager to get some actual thinking done on the road that time, as opposed to the failure on the drive to Las Vegas, where I'd been too nervous and sleep deprived to actually consider a single thing I was supposed to have been thinking about.

I checked out of the hotel and started back down the highway, sending well wishes to Dinah, wherever she was in the city as I drove south again. I stopped at a small diner on the way out of Primm, before settling in for the long haul. Trying to play the radio, the only thing I could hear was static, even when I twisted the knobs. Assuming I was too far into the mountains past Las Vegas to get a radio signal, I checked around the vehicle to see if there were any tapes that could play in our car radio. Thanking all things holy, I found a tape of some of Peter, Paul, and Mary's greatest hits, right beside a Beach Boys cassette. "Oh, thank God," I muttered to myself, sticking the tape into the tape player and rewinding it all the way back to the beginning.

Peter, Paul, and Mary seemed to work well with my plans for the drive, their soothing, melodic voices all helping me to think more clearly about what I had to figure out. I thought about what Farlan had told me before he'd sent me off, that my brain was the next brain he'd study if he had the choice. To that, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be offended, or flattered, so after a short deliberation period, I settled for a bit of both and continued to my next course of action.

I wondered for a solid forty five minute leg of the drive what I should do about intimacy with Levi. I had nearly had a panic attack about the situation only the day before, but, as it would turn out, high-pitched emotions screaming through one's mind at a million miles a second does not help with problem-solving. So despite physically feeling better about it, after purging some of the toxic buildup in my system, I still had no real solution to the problem. Farlan and Isabel must have thought of me as some kind of addict to that kind of thing, but really, I could have stopped being intimate with Levi at any point of my choosing. Thus far, I had just simply chosen not to, which, I was aware was wrong on more levels than one, though the longer I thought about it, the more addicted I sounded.

Trying to justify it would get me nowhere, I realized when I passed Barstow, California. I couldn't try to make them see why it was, in fact, not a flawed course of action, because even I couldn't have said that honestly. As I began to descend into the LA Basin, I knew I had taken the wrong direction, and now had to make a sort of loop back out of it, which would have been far more bothersome in the 1990s, when there were traffic jams even out in the middle of nowhere.

It crossed my mind what Dinah had said the night prior, that I loved Levi, and that thought resonated loudly in my head for another long stretch of road. I was unable to process that statement as a whole, so just replayed the conversation in my mind while I tried to make sense of it all.

I kept trying to picture him, and every time I did, I was filled with an overwhelming warmth, like I had flicked a lighter and was using it to heat my hands in the middle of winter, except that when I thought about Levi, the warmth spread from my ears to my toes like a wildfire, and the first thing I could think of doing once I got back into town would be to wrap my arms around him.

I decided that surprising him was not the worst idea I'd ever come up with, and so when the end of my journey drew near, I filled up the gas tank one last time in Diez Coronas, close enough to home that the loss of gas would be negligible by the time I got home, even after a pit stop at Levi's house. I found his turnoff, and remembered not to pull in all the way because of the broken glass, just pulling in enough that it would conceal the car from the main road. I jogged down towards his boxcar, catching his attention as he rounded the corner from behind it. His attention shifted to me so quickly, it was a wonder he didn't snap his spine trying to whip his head around to do the double take.

"You're back!" he exclaimed, far more excitedly than I'd been expecting. He began to pick up his strides until he was jogging towards me faster than I was jogging towards him. When we closed the distance between our bodies, I could feel his arms wrapping around me, but not his hands, like he was trying not to get something on the back of my shirt. "Watch the hands, they've got shit on 'em. It'll stain," he said, kissing my lips a single time before pulling away and showing me his hands, that even in the dusky purple that lingers just after sundown, it was easy to tell that his hands had practically been dunked in blood.

"Hi," I grinned, ignoring his bloody hands at first, just trying to enjoy the moment for a second. "So what's goin' on with your hands?" I asked after a minute longer, not entirely nervous that he'd hurt anybody in my absence, but definitely a little alarmed at that quantity of blood, that seemed rather fresh.


	28. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okie dokie, I'm back. Did ya miss me?

Levi didn’t look in the slightest bit alarmed by the blood dripping onto the dirt from his hands, far more occupied with attempting to get where he could clean them than he was with the source of the blood at the moment, but I was having a hard time not having some sort of breakdown again. It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle blood, it had just come so far out of left field that I was in a state of mild shock. “Well, I was on the  _ way _ to the spigot, but then you showed up, and derailed those plans. So, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that these are partially your fault,” he said matter of factly. “Come on, now you have to come with me. As retribution, obviously.”

“How is that fair? I show up less than two minutes ago, and you’re already blaming me for things?” I laughed nervously, nudging his shoulder with my elbow while he led me to the spigot and opened the faucet, allowing cold well water to splatter into the rock pile Levi had made. I wasn’t going to start by accusing him, instead, as I was trying to make it a playful conversation, so that Levi would feel more comfortable sharing with me. “So do you wanna tell me  _ why _ your hands are covered in blood, Mr. Ackerman?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow and smirking at Levi while he began to start rinsing his hands.

“Ugh, don’t call me that. Mr. Ackerman was my uncle,” Levi muttered, grabbing a bar of soap from a small hanging basket and scrubbing his palms, the backs of his hands, each one of his fingers and beneath each one of his fingernails before rinsing with the water and closing the spigot. “But yeah, now that the blood is off of me, I was trying to see if I could dissolve flesh, or at least make it separable from bone with alcohol. So I had to do some bloodletting for the bird that I’m trying to preserve, but I did not know that it was partly alive still, because I had found it on the side of the road, and it hadn’t moved a single time while I’d been carrying it. If I'd known it was alive, I would have just left it there for another day or two and come back when I was sure it was dead. When I cut it open for the bloodletting, though, because it still had a faint pulse, and I stabbed it in a place where there were lots of blood vessels, it started getting everywhere, and all over my hands, unfortunately.” He sounded kind of wired by that incident, like his initial shock had devolved into a buzzing, energized mood, that was not necessarily positive. 

“Jeez, you okay?” I asked, following Levi while he led me towards the back of the boxcar, presumably towards the scene of the accident.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It was gonna die anyways,” Levi shrugged, pointing towards the dead vulture that was splayed out on the ground, sitting in a fairly sizable pool of blood, the source being a rather deep slice running vertically down its lower abdomen. There were bits of paint in its feathers, seemingly from a car hitting it, as well as some other external damage, and I was willing to take Levi’s word for it. “I probably did it a favor. It was probably paralyzed or some shit. Obviously I didn’t mean to, but, you know what they say: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Oh well.”

“Yeah, and how are you gonna prevent that from happening in the future?” I asked assertively, both regretting and enjoying my detour. I was enjoying it, because not only was it a chance to see Levi, but he had just given me a great opportunity to do my job, I was regretting it only because I hadn’t been expecting to drop by Levi’s house and be immediately at work again. Work was a double edged sword, both incredibly rewarding, and incredibly taxing at the same time.

“I dunno. I thought it was dead, Eren, I swear to God. It was not my intention to kill it. I just wanted its bones, so I can put it together again. Like a lego set, but a dead bird instead of some weird, multicolored house,” Levi explained, gesturing towards the bird before approaching it with a bloodied bowie knife that had been resting on the earth beside the carcass, and making several long, deep incisions along its body before hanging it on the outside wall in front of the train car. I wasn’t exactly sure what to think, but I was fairly curious to see how Levi would continue prep and preserve the body of the vulture in the future.

“So, what’s the next step then, Mr. I-have-the-audacity-to-call-lego-sets-weird?” I asked, wrapping an arm around his shoulder, amused that he called legos weird as he was actually dissecting a large carnivorous bird. 

“Sounds like  _ somebody _ played with Legos,” Levi bit back, smirking at me, watching as the blood began to drain from the enormous bird. “Fucking weirdo. You kiddin’ me? Lincoln Logs was where it was at. I could have spent hours with those fuckin’ things, and I did, on several occasions, between the ages of about four and nine.”

Doing a quick mental rerun of everything I had thought about during my drive, and everything I had talked with Dinah about the night prior, I decided that despite what I’d just walked in on, nothing had changed in terms of feelings I had for him. At that moment, I realized that Dinah was right: I had fallen desperately, inexonerably in love with Levi Ackerman, and so I took a deep breath before beginning to reprimand him. “But you are aware that you can’t just assume something is dead, right? Like, unless it’s really, really dead, you can’t just see something on the road like, “Yup, looks dead enough for me,” and take it, and start trying to drain its blood. People will think you’re a Manson Family straggler.”

“Why?” he asked, gesturing towards his bird. “You don’t have to be Charles Manson to like lookin’ at dead shit. You ever been to a history museum? But, as a side note, back in, like, October, did you see that paper they ran about that guy that was kidnapping those chicks in Washington? The attorney dude, remember?”

“Ted Bundy?” I asked, and Levi shrugged, his eyes reflecting the rich pool of stars against blue-black sky.

“I don’t remember his name, but that’s probably right,” Levi said, walking towards the spigot one more time, and washing his hands again, raising his voice the farther away he got from me, as to continue our conversation.

“Didn’t he escape?” I asked, furrowing my brow to try and remember what month Bundy had escaped. Then I remembered that the month had already passed, but the year was what was off. Ted Bundy had escaped in the summer of 1977, two years later than the year we were in. I cringed while I waited for Levi to call me on my error.

“What was that?” Levi asked, not having turned the spigot off yet, which I felt immensely grateful for during those couple of seconds.

“Uh,” I said, dragging out the sound for as long as possible before saying, “I forgot.”

“Okay, then,” Levi muttered, whistling while he walked back towards the train car he lived in, climbing inside of the dimly lit building. “Eren, I have a serious question for you,” he said, returning from the train car and sitting down beside me on one of the rock chairs that sat beside the unlit fire pit.

“What’s your serious question?” I asked, looking towards Levi in the dying sunlight. 

“Well, you know, every time you find out about shit like this, I always kinda cringe and wait for you to lose your mind over it, but you never do. I guess I was just wondering why that is? Because I feel like most people would be more alarmed than you have been. About the dead things, I mean,” he said, his voice hardly louder than a whisper when he spoke to me. 

I took a moment to consider my response before saying, “Well, you don’t really think I’m like most people, do you?” I caught a glint of something strange cross his face, a microexpression that was gone too quickly for me to process.

“Well, why? Why me, Eren?” Levi pushed, using a slightly more abrasive tone than he had been using before. 

“Because,” I said, pausing while I tried to think of something I could tell him that wouldn’t break my contract. “Because you’re not like most people, either.” 

“Oh,” the boy beside me said timidly, and for whatever reason, this seemed to be the most vulnerable situation I’d seen him in. 

“Can I ask you something?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t try to be a wisecrack and tell me that I already had asked him something.

“Sure,” he muttered, pushing the toe of his boot into the dirt and staring at the patterns he was making in whatever would budge with the pressure he was applying.

“How are you feeling, right now?”

He looked up at me, his eyes glazed over with some strong surge of emotion, completely out of the ordinary for him. “About what?” he whispered.

“About anything. What’s goin’ on in your head right now?” I pushed, hoping to get something less cryptic from him than what he had been giving me.

“I’m not sure. I can’t say,” Levi responded, resting his hands flat on the tops of his thighs. 

“You can’t say because you don’t want to, or you can’t say because you think I’ll judge you?” I could hear insects beginning to whir and chirp in the bushes as the final purple-orange glow sank finally beneath the horizon, giving way to the countless stars that were beginning to appear over our heads. 

“Bit of both,” he shrugged.

“Have I ever judged you before?” I asked, swatting at a small bug that had landed on my arm, trying not to let it distract me.

“Hold on,” he said, frantically pulling his fingers through his hair until he found an offending moth that flew off into the night before he could do anything else with it. “Let’s get inside. I have citronella. And mosquito curtains.They’re brand spankin’ new, too,” he added, a certain pride in his voice when he spoke about them. “The bugs have been biting. Means there’s gonna be a storm soon. C’mon. I don’t feel like dealing with this right now.”

He stood and led me towards his abode, and we climbed into the dimly lit metal box. He had the candle on his nightstand burning a soft orange hue into the rusty walls. “You can, uh, sit over on this side if you want,” he said, sitting down at the top of his bed, gesturing towards the foot for me. He took off his boots before bringing his feet up onto his blanket, and I did the same, leaning up against his dresser so that my back wouldn’t start to hurt from all the slouching. 

“So you didn’t answer my question,” I prompted, trying to remind him where we had left off. “I asked you if you thought I’d ever judged you before.”

“Well, I dunno. I mean probably,” he trailed off, shrugging his shoulders again, as he wasn’t entirely sure what to say to me. 

“When are you most afraid that I judged you?” I asked, folding my arms and trying not to think about the fact that I was sitting on his bed with him. 

“I dunno, there are a couple of times, but, uh, I guess the biggest thing was that I’m nervous that I really fucked things up with you and Petra. Way back at homecoming, do you remember?” he asked. In all honesty, I had put that moment behind me the moment that it was over. I had known at the time that it wasn’t my job to hold grudges, despite knowingly putting Levi in the hot seat for a few minutes. 

“Dude, that’s like, ancient history. I’m sure Petra would tell you the same thing. You’ve been solid ever since then. It isn’t really like you’ve given us more reasons to worry,” I shrugged, trying to make him feel better.

“Eren, how much do you like me?” he asked suddenly, turning his head towards me and staring at me with widened eyes, like he was trying to draw the answer out of me. 

I wasn’t sure how much I should have shared, though Dinah’s advice grew only more appealing each time I ran it through my circuits, but, “More than you think I do,” was the best I could manage at the time being. 

“Yeah?” he asked, his expression and rigid posture relaxing a little while my words sank in.

“Yeah,” I nodded, giving him a small smile while he adjusted the pillow behind his back. I realized that I had made my decision for Farlan. I was going to do the best work I could possibly do, but once Levi turned eighteen, there were some things that he and Isabel would have to deal with. I wasn’t perfect, but neither were they. If they had been as justice-oriented as they claimed to be, I would have left 1975 in handcuffs about a day prior, potential infidelity exposure be damned. I came to realize, however, that everybody had their vices, and there wasn’t really anybody that lived entirely in the black, or entirely in the white; we were all shades of grey at the end of the day. Farlan and Isabel were no different. They were people, just like I was, and just like Levi was, and while I would hold off until he was of age, after that I would make no promises. Frankly, it made me nervous how entangled Levi and I had become, but slowly the idea of calling him mine scared me less and less.

“Eren?” Levi murmured, snapping me out of my contemplative stupor and bringing me back to my senses. 

“Hmm?” I asked, watching the flickering light ripple across his face in the dark room, casting long, warping shadows across the walls. Paired with the sounds coming from just outside the mosquito net, the atmosphere was both beautiful and unsetting, which had managed to become the story of my life over the last few months. 

“Can I kiss you?” he asked, completely catching me off guard. When my shock temporarily left me mute, he continued, “I- I mean, we don’t have to, I just like it when you come- um- around. Er, wait. That came out weird.”

“Come here,” I said, my voice sounding far more biting than I had intended, but Levi seemed to respond quickly, making his way towards my side of his bed and sitting on his knees in front of me.

“Now, can I kiss you?” he asked, smirking a little while I drew him closer to me by his chin. Our lips met gently and I smiled against his lips when he moved his hands slowly to my jaw, guiding me when my hands relaxed. His lips were chapped against mine, and while normally that would have been a bother, I actually didn’t mind. My arms moved to wrap around his waist, pulling his body closer to mine and causing me to lean farther against his heavy looking dresser. “It’s so nice to be this close to you,” he whispered between slow kisses, his eyelids beginning to droop as he continued to relax. They weren’t exactly sexual kisses, but they weren’t the ones you’d try to land on your grandmother, either. The point of it wasn’t to arouse each other, though I couldn’t deny a certain warm tightness I’d started feeling after a while.

“Close how?” I asked, pulling back for a moment to respond to his declaration.

“Just, it’s nice to feel like we’re even in the same ballpark sometimes,” Levi muttered, before leaning down to cover my neck in heavy kisses. I wondered what he meant by that, but was rather preoccupied and didn’t take the chance to ask him. “It’s so nice that I can just do this with you, and tell you things and not have to worry about everything sometimes,” he said, fully willing to have a deep conversation with me while slowly snaking his hand up my shirt at the same time. “But really, I guess I’m just happy you came over as soon as you got back from wherever you went yesterday.”

“Levi,” I laughed, resting my hand on top of his, feeling his fingers through the fabric of my shirt while they roamed up my waist. “What are you gonna do if one of us gets hard?”

“At the rate we’re going, I’m probably gonna be that person,” he snorted in response, retracting his hand from my shirt. I knew that until he was eighteen, I would have to show some restraint, which was already proving to be rather difficult. 

“Maybe so,” I grinned, giving him one last kiss before I pulled away, waiting for Levi to retreat to his side of the bed again. “But I wouldn’t put money on it,” I added slyly, shooting him a wink.

“Seriously? Do you have any idea how sexy it is just to have my hands on you?” Levi asked incredulously. “Even just thinking about you is enough for me when you’re not around,” he admitted quietly, his pale cheeks flushing a rosy shade of pink.

“Same here,” I replied honestly. There had been a couple lonelier nights that visualizing Levi had certainly helped me through.

“You know, I had never done that before I met you,” he said, returning to his propped up pillow, which was good, because I wasn’t sure if I would have been able to continue to hold off with him sitting right in front of me telling me that he had touched himself and thought of me.

“Really? Not ever?” I asked curiously while he crossed his legs and lit a cigarette. 

“Yeah. I didn’t think sexual activities were appealing. I just didn’t see a point to it. I wasn’t trying to connect with anybody, and as for touching myself, I guess I just never needed to badly enough. I also had it in my head that I was supposed to think about girls, which never put me into the headspace I needed to be in,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “Little did I know,” he trailed off, his eyes looking up at me and landing his gaze on my lips. I assumed it was my lips because he wasn’t quite looking me in the eyes, but slightly below them.

“Yeah, really,” I said, still taken aback by the fact that he had held himself back that long. 

“Eren, if I promise not to do anything to start something that we shouldn’t end up finishing, will you come over here and just lay down with me? I’ve had a really odd couple of weeks, and having you next to me will help, I think,” he asked, patting a spot beside where he was sitting before leaning back and kicking his legs out, which I thought was one of the most heartwarming gestures he’d ever extended to me before. I nodded and crawled up, laying beside him. I had only hugged him a handful of times, and usually snuggling him would have been completely out of the question, but that night was the most affectionate I’d ever seen him.

“I can’t stay for too much longer, cuz it’s dark, and Farlan and Isabel will start to get worried if I’m gone too long,” I said quietly, setting the boundary with him, partly to see how he would respond and partly because it was genuinely a boundary I needed to set. 

“That’s fine,” he replied, wrapping his arms around my shoulders while I rested my head on the pillow beside him.

“Did something happen while I was gone? You’re not usually like this,” I said as soon as the thought had hit me. 

“I guess,” he sighed. “It wasn’t that important, though. Nothing to write home about,” he said, and though I couldn’t see his face, I could hear the subtle smirk in his voice. 

“What happened?” I pushed, trying to see where he would draw the line that night, and wondering how I could make him feel any better. It occurred to me that he didn’t ever seem to be very open about how he was feeling. He could be crabby all day, and be having a great time, or he could be pleasant all day, and really be hurting. I wasn’t sure I had ever met another person that could completely tune himself out the way he seemed to be able to. 

“I saw my mother and my sister in the grocery store, which was pretty bogue, but she didn’t make a scene this time, so that was nice. The last time I ran into her in public didn’t go down as nicely. And it really blows because it’s a small town, so every adult here just thinks I’m some kind of huge ass. Not that I really care what they think, but getting jobs has certainly been difficult.” It made sense to me, that he would need some sort of physical affection after seeing his family so close up, and immediately, I snuggled up closer to him in an attempt to nonverbally reassure him. 

“Do you work anywhere right now?” I asked, not having noticed him having to work.

“Nah. I saved enough up over my summer job at the library that I can coast at least part of the way through the school year. Money’s gonna get real tight around spring break, but I’ll pull through. I already have stuff put aside for shit for the bike, and some gas money saved up. That’s all leftover from my other job, though. I did a six week firefighting thing at the beginning of the summer instead of going to summer school, and that ended up paying really well. I knew I had to start saving up money so that I wouldn’t get clocked for truancy in the fall.”

I was amazed by his work ethic, even if academically, his grades seemed to be lacklustre, for good reason. He had to choose before learning and having food, and he chose what he had to in order to stay alive. I had a great deal of respect for him for doing that when it came down to it. 

“Wow, you work so hard,” I muttered, still in awe of everything he had accomplished over the two months of summer break.

“I do what I can. The firefighting was wild. I wasn’t, like, actually a firefighter. I just had to be at base camp in case they needed me for anything. It was more like a paid internship than it was like a job, but they treated me well enough, and like I said, I made more money than they had initially said I would, because they kept me out there for a couple weeks longer than they said they were going to, so that was a huge bonus.”

“You’re so tough, it’s unbelievable,” I replied, relaxing beside him while he seemed to do the same.

“I just do what I have to do. You would too, if you were in my shoes. I’m not special, just pressed for money, and needing to graduate high school,” he shrugged, creating a quiet rustling sound from the friction against his blanket.

“Well, I think you’re incredible,” I said, a confession on the tip of my tongue, but I bit it back, wanting to enjoy my evening with him without making things awkward at the very end. 

“Thanks, Eren. I think you’re pretty groovy, too. You’re an Ace, and you have no idea,” he murmured, laughing as he concluded his response. “It’s pretty frustrating sometimes, because whatever you think about yourself makes it hard for you to catch me staring at you. It’s like you think I wouldn’t,” he chortled, propping himself up on his side and pushing his fingertips through my hair.

“Well, you got me there. Touche,” I replied, smiling while he continued to play with my hair. We fell into a fairly comfortable silence, the only thorn in our sides being the looming fact that I would have to get up and go home at any moment. I didn’t want to leave without telling him what I’d showed up to tell him, but I was also terrified to see how he would respond. Deciding finally to wait it out, I sat up and gave him a final peck on his cheek before putting on my shoes and getting off of his bed. He followed suit and walked me to my car, filling me with a sweet relief as I realized how many little things he’d begun to do to show his affection. 

“Hey, thanks for coming out here, I look forward to hearing all about your little trip in shop tomorrow,” he nodded slowly while I climbed into the driver’s seat of the station wagon I had left at the mouth of his turnoff, lucky a cop hadn’t seen it in the distance from the highway. 

“You bet,” I smiled at him while I closed the door and started the engine, waving at him a final time before beginning to pull out, pausing to crank my window down and holler, “Good luck with the vulture!”

“Thank you!” he called over his shoulder while he began to walk back towards his home while I started up again, driving towards mine.


	29. Chapter 27

_ Short Chapter this week. Take that for what it is.  _

Upon my arrival at my house, I discovered Farlan and Isabel resting on the brown plaid couch in the living room, their usual haunts, it seemed, as that was where they always managed to be when I arrived home. 

“I’m back,” I said while I crossed the threshold with my bag and dropped it onto the table in the kitchen. 

“Oh, good,” Isabel said, smiling weakly while she stood up. “Dinner’s in the fridge. Did you have any Moses-type revelations while you were off on your own?”

“I guess I did, actually,” I replied quietly, knowing that the answer I was about to give them wasn’t the one that they likely wanted to hear. 

“Good!” She exclaimed, patting me on the shoulder and gesturing towards the refrigerator. “Grab some dinner, heat it up, and sit down. We’d love to hear what you’ve come up with. We have also had time to do a lot of thinking, and I think that if we play our cards right tonight, we can come to a pretty solid agreement.”

“Okay,” I said, following her instructions and rifling through the fridge until I had constructed something of a suitable dinner with leftovers, before heating it and meandering towards the inevitable discussion I was about to have. The two of them seemed to be in relatively good moods, which gave me confidence that we actually would be able to come to a sort of truce without jeopardizing the rest of our mission. 

The fear of being wrong in all of this, and putting Levi’s life at stake back in the present was becoming difficult to ignore as well, so I knew that if everything I’d come up with on the drive back towards Duplaine was indeed how I felt, which it was, then I’d have to come up with a plan that would not only keep him happy presently in his teenage years, but also prevent future issues further down the line. It was a tricky situation but I figured that with their extensive psychology expertise, Farlan and Isabel would be able to help me formulate a well thought out course of action for all of us for the next year and change.

“So, go ahead,” Farlan nodded, watching me closely while I picked at my dinner, like I existed on a microscope slide, just asking to be observed. 

“Well, during my drive, I think I managed to figure out where my feelings from Levi came from, and, well, what they are exactly, but it puts me into an even more perplexing situation, so I’m officially gonna ask you two for help,” I started, trying to read the room, checking their responses to make sure I could share without negative retribution. 

“Oh, good. Finally,” Farlan snorted somewhat jovially, given the situation. “We can knock some bloody sense into ya.”

“That was unnecessary,” I said quietly, hoping to just get the conversation over with without being afraid of what Farlan and Isaebel would say. 

“Well, you know what, Eren? A lot of this shit has been pretty fucking unnecessary, and if we had actually started working together from the get-go, then we wouldn’t even be in this situation. Let’s just come to an agreement and bury whatever hatchets we’ve got with each other here and now, so that we can get back on track and get this shit done,” Farlan said, punctuating each word with his gritted teeth. “I’m here to prevent murders, alright? What are you here for?”

“Hey, lay off,” Isabel chimed in, pushing her wire-rimmed reading glasses up the narrow bridge of her nose as it began to succumb to gravity and slide downwards. “He wouldn’t have passed the psych eval if he hadn’t been trying to prevent the crimes in the first place. Whether or not you’ve broken the rules, you’re still our partner, Eren, and you have been completely honest with us, as far as I’m aware, including in situations where it would have been easier to tell a lie. As of right now, I have no reason not to trust your word. Don’t take that lightly.” There was a tangible change in the atmosphere after Isabel had spoken her piece. It was completely silent for a moment, to the point that I could hear that I’d accidentally left the faucet on when I had gotten water from the sink to drink with my dinner, the constant  _ drip, drip, drip _ of the slowly expelled water acted as a broken metronome keeping unsteady time with the suffocating quiet. “So, Eren, I’m gonna give you the floor.”

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat and doing my best to prepare for whatever was to come. “I- I really care about him. More than care about him. I just want good things to happen to him, and I want him to grow into an at least partly well rounded individual. I wanna see him smile about something every day. I want his sister to be okay. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish that,” I said, trying to avoid saying the word “love” without creating any mistruths. “I guess I’m really just not cut out for this. It should have been Armin,” I said, guilt beginning to creep across my skin once again while I considered the fact that my own selfish actions were potentially hindering Levi’s future. “I’m sorry, but I can’t be unbiased with him, and if you wanna kick me off the team for that, that’s probably the right thing to do anyway, but I will not sit around and let him be unhappy if I can do anything to help it.”

There was a long pause while my words sank into the atmosphere around them, but eventually Farlan spoke. “I think that loving somebody is a noble enough cause to do right by them, Eren,” he began. “But I think you’ve got the wrong idea of what it is to do right by Levi. Obviously intimacy is part of most healthy relationships, but barring that, there are lots of things you can do to make him feel loved, and accepted, and everything he had never conceptualized when he was on track to murdering dozens of people in cold blood. You can stall the sex until he’s legal with meaningful conversations. If you love him,  _ get to know him _ . Ask him what his favorite food is, or what he’s most afraid of, and remember it, Eren. And I know love advice from me seems like a pretty shitty turn of events, considering I’m actively having an affair with my wife, whom I do, in fact, love, but as for psychologists, we’re the best you’ve got at your disposal. I’m telling you, Eren, right now, that I don’t have an issue with you being with Levi, as long as you are not any more intimate than you have been until he is a legal adult. Keep it quiet, and I promise I will, too. You have my word.”

“You have mine as well,” Isabel chimed in. “I understand that despite it being sexually deviant, homosexuality is not something you can help, and as long as he is consenting, and it’s not having a negative effect on the trial, I’ll keep my mouth shut. But if it becomes toxic or unhealthy, you’re gonna have to know him and yourself well enough to pull the plug without destroying the progress we’re making. We can also include him in more of our family activities, so that he doesn’t feel like such an outsider, if you think that would be good for him.”

“Well, sure, I think that’s a great idea. If he starts to view you guys as a second family, you will also get a lot more time to talk some sense into him,” I said, nodding at them, understanding exactly what I was supposed to be doing from that point onward. I was supposed to be a boyfriend, not just a sex partner, and upon actively differentiating the two, I was more than happy to oblige for the time being. 

“Exactly,” Farlan grinned. “See? The dream team isn’t dead, yet,” he said with a scoff to punctuate his snide remark. “But before we let you go for the night, and please, be honest with us, what is the extent of your sexual contact with our client?”

Immediately, I felt my face flush with heat, and I could tell by the expressions on my partner’s faces that I was sporting quite the blush. “ _ Eh, _ let’s call it third base and leave it at that.”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” Isabel sighed, shaking her head slowly, and I couldn’t tell if it was sardonicism or grim realism that was settling into her expression.

“Okay, you’re free for the night. Get some rest,” Farlan said, waving at me while I retreated towards the staircase, and rest, I got, in between spurts of carbon-steel sleeplessness, managing to wake me for a final spurt about ten minutes before my alarm was set to go off. Grumbling quiet curses to myself while I practically staggered to the bathroom to freshen up before I got dressed for the day. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, preparing for the day I had ahead of me, trying not to fall asleep on my feet while I left the house and started for the bus. I sat beside Petra, just like I always did, and despite my anxiety after turning her down, she seemed to be as bubbly and talkative as usual, which certainly helped to calm my nerves a little bit. 

“How was your weekend?” she asked, her doe brown eyes regarding me with soft stoicism.

“Uh, good, how was yours?” I replied, returning the question.

“It was pretty good. I tried to get a hold of you on Sunday, but your aunt said you were out of town?” I watched as her eyes flicked upwards to catch mine, questioning me with her warm pools of brown, spattered with flecks of orange and yellow that glimmered in the morning sunlight, catching fire to her strawberry hair. 

“Oh, yeah, I guess so,” I shrugged. “I was, um, yeah,” I tried to explain, but I wasn’t sure what exactly to tell her. It wasn’t like I could tell her I’d gone to Vegas and picked up a sex worker to try to forget about my feelings for her best friend, so I let out a sigh and compressed what I had told to Levi, “I got into an argument with my uncle and skipped town for the weekend.”

Petra giggled at that, though I wasn’t sure what she found to be amusing about what I’d just told her, so I awaited her enlightenment, “Sorry, I was just not expecting to hear that. I figured you weren’t the type to do that kinda thing.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, hoping Isabel hadn’t told her something different, and internally kicking myself for not asking when I’d had the chance the night prior. 

“I dunno, sometimes you kinda seem like you brown nose for your folks,” she said with a small smile. 

“Me?” I scoffed, knowing that that was absolutely not what was happening behind closed doors. “No way.”

“Um, yes way,” she laughed. “Sometimes you have your head so far up your ass that it’s actually up their asses instead,” she insisted, and while I was taken aback by the sudden vulgarity that instantly reminded me of Levi, I understood she had a point. “You always act like such a goodie-two-shoes around them.”

“Well, that’s how you get ‘em, ya see?” I defended, giving her a brief, earnest commentary on parental relations, though as I spoke I began to wish I had taken my own advice earlier on. “You act all good around your parents so they don’t suspect you when you do something bad. If you’re out getting in fights with them all the time, then when something goes wrong, you’re gonna be the first one they blame.”

“Fair enough, but my dad is such a piece of work sometimes. You know he was in favor of Vietnam, even when Robbie lost his arm, he said he did it for his country, and he should be proud to have fought that hard,” she said, her tone having devolved into a mocking impersonation of her father’s voice by the end. “Even though Robbie wasn’t even in battle. It was a landmine. And now he has to deal with flashbacks for the rest of his life because nobody understands that killing each other doesn’t make anybody happy.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think that my aunt or uncle were in favor of Vietnam,” I said after considering for far too long what the appropriate response to such a tangential statement should have been. 

“Well, that’s one less reason to argue with them, I guess,” she said with a sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose and shaking her head. Then the pieces of what she wasn’t telling me began to fall into place.

“Did something happen this weekend?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t off the mark with my conjecture.

“I don’t know, my dad and Robbie just don’t get along like they used to anymore, and Rob came to visit on Saturday, which ended with a huge fight. It isn’t that unusual, though. I’m just worried that one of these days, Robbie isn’t gonna come back,” she explained quietly as the bus came to a stop in front of our school. 

“I understand,” I responded back to her in a tone that matched, pulling her into a quick hug from the side and giving her shoulder a squeeze while we descended the steps from the school bus. 

“So, I didn’t even ask you what the argument was about, I’m sorry,” she said suddenly when we had almost reached the door to the brick building. 

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” I replied softly while we crossed the threshold. “It wasn’t that important.”

“Are you sure?” she asked while we made our way to our first period class. 

“Yeah, I’m sure. It’s all groovy now, man,” I smiled at her when we sat down at our desks. 

Almost like he had a homing beacon on us, Levi was immediately standing in front of Petra’s desk, almost as soon as she sat down. “Ral, how do you feel about going to Diez Coronas after school today. We could even play hookie and go during lunch if you want.”

“Why do you wanna go to Diez Coronas?” She asked what I had been thinking. 

“Well, I dunno, I just kinda wanna fuck around out there today,” Levi shrugged, looking over at me briefly before saying, “And I need a ride, cuz walking’s too long.”

“I guess I wouldn’t mind. That mall has some of my favorite stores, but that’s a lot of gas,” she said slowly, like she was waiting for him to convince her further.

“I can pay for gas, I just need to get out there today,” Levi said and Petra playfully raised an eyebrow at him. 

“Well, if you can’t take him, I’m sure I could steal my folk’s car for a bit,” I offered, watching Levi’s eyes flicker with something similar to gratitude. “Or we could invite Riko and Ollie and make a whole day out of it.”

“That sounds like fun! I’m officially in,” Petra exclaimed, before adopting a fake sternness to her voice and shooting Levi a nasty glare. “Now back to your chair, young man, before I call a meeting with the principal,” she barked at him before breaking out into a wide grin and shooting him a playful wink. “I’ll see you after class, Mr. Ackerman,” she giggled, perfectly amused with herself while Levi slouched back towards his seat.


	30. Chapter 28

Lunch eventually came to separate the long school day, and Petra and I found Riko and Oluo, convincing them to come search for Levi with us so that we could ditch the rest of the school day and go to the city. We found him in his usual haunts at the back of the school, behind the noisy air conditioning unit, smoking a finely rolled spliff. 

“Oh, you don’t expect me to  _ share _ with you?” he scoffed, looking up and addressing all of us as he got to his feet.

“Well, now that you said it,” Riko smirked, plucking the burning paper from his hands and taking a quick inhale of the cannabis smoke before slipping it back between his lips. 

“You ready to rock n’ roll?” Petra asked Levi, who nodded as we walked around the building to where the cars were parked, but as Oluo was the only one that had driven to school that morning, we would either have to make due with his single bench pickup truck or drive to one of our houses to get another car.

“So, what’s it gonna be, gang? Petra’s place to get the Trans Am or are we just gonna push through with all five of us in the truck?” Oluo asked, looking at Petra as he regarded her, passing the decision onto her.

“I think my parents are home today, so I’d be dead meat if I walked through that door before school’s out,” Petra replied. 

“Well, then rock, paper, scissors to see who the two losers are that have to lay in the bed,” Riko said, before adding, “and it ain’t gonna be me, because I have girlfriend privileges.”

“Fair enough,” Petra said, holding up a fist, readying herself for a duel with me and Levi.

“I think Petra should get it,” Levi said, looking at me with a stern expression on his sharp features. “Ladies first, and all that.”

“What a gentleman, I’m flattered,” Petra said flatly, flicking Levi in the head while the three of them piled into the cab of Oluo’s truck. “You were just afraid you’d lose to me in rock, paper, scissors. I am the reigning champion,” she said haughtily while she slipped into the cab. Levi and I were quick to jump into the bed. 

“Lay down until we’re on the highway, alright? I don’t need the fuzz on my ass because of you two,” Ollie instructed from an open window while he started the engine. We did as we were told and laid down beside one another while Ollie peeled out of the parking lot. Laying right up against the cab, we were out of sight of the rear view mirror, and seizing this opportunity, Levi’s hand gradually found mine. As his fingers laced themselves between mine, we looked up at the vast sky. Deep azure, only broken up by soft cirrus clouds that wafted through the air like the wispy ends of timelessly beautiful hair. 

“How was your day, Eren?” Levi asked quietly, his voice dulled by the whipping wind, signalling that Ollie was picking up speed.

“Pretty good, how about you?” I replied, closing my eyes, and relaxing my muscles while I laid down beside him. 

“I’m doing alright,” he said, giving my hand a quick, reaffirming squeeze.

“That’s good to hear. So, why do you need to go into Diez Coronas, anyway?” I questioned why he’d been so insistent on going, but failing to entertain us with the idea of why.

“I need to get a part for the bike that they don’t have at the auto shop in town,” he answered openly as soon as I had asked. 

“Oh, okay,” I permitted, before pushing further. “Why didn’t you just say that? I’m sure that Petra would have been more keen on taking you if you’d just told her you needed to run an errand.”

“I don’t make a habit of asking people for favors,” Levi sighed before I heard the back window of the cab unlatch and begin to slide open. I felt Levi’s fingers quickly wrench themselves from mine while he snapped his hand back to his side. Slowly, I opened my eyes and saw Riko peeking her head through the new opening. 

“We’re on the highway. You guys can sit up now,” she informed us while radio music drifted out from behind her. We did as we were told and sat up, leaning against either side of the truck bed.

“Cool,” Levi muttered, folding one leg against his chest and letting the other fall lazily akimbo. 

“Thanks,” I smiled, returning the bright one she shot us before whipping back around in her seat and settling between Petra and Ollie once more. 

The rest of the ride was rather uneventful until we had closed in on the city when Riko turned around again and asked us if there was anywhere in particular we wanted to go.

“I don’t really care,” I shrugged, allowing Levi to have my vote. 

“While we’re here, we should go to the mall,” Levi suggested, lifting his eyebrows at Riko who nodded before consulting the rest of the cab to relay our message. “There’s an auto parts store at the mall,” he said lowering his volume and winking at me when a smirk flicked itself onto my face.

“You sneaky bastard,” I remarked as Riko returned to relay another message to us. 

“Yeah, it seems like majority wins for the mall. Petra and I wanna go, too, and Oluo said he doesn’t care,” she said, acting as our personal informant. “Now lay down again till we get there.”

Once again, we did as we were told until the truck pulled into a parking spot at the mall. Levi and I both hopped over the side of the truck bed, Levi landing far more gracefully than I did, tripping over my own feet as I hit the ground. I stumbled but caught myself and fell into step with the rest of my friend group.

We spent nearly two hours browsing department stores and record shops. Petra darted for a bookstore, while Riko seemed to be dragging Oluo with her in search of a specific record that she didn’t own yet, while Levi excused himself for a moment to go get the part he needed. I bounced between groups of people until Levi returned, holding the bag containing the motorcycle part he needed before leading us all to the food court, and I was reminded by my stomach growling that we had all skipped lunch. We each wolfed down a couple of hamburgers, as it was now after three, and none of us had eaten that day, washing it down with colas and rootbeers before hunting for something else to occupy our time with. 

“Hey, down the road a little is a new arcade. It’s got Pong!” Petra exclaimed, and that seemed to grab Oluo’s attention, but Riko and Levi looked more confused by that information.

“What’s Pong?” Levi asked, narrowing his eyes at his friend, who was quick to explain herself.

“It’s that Atari game,” Petra said, and Levi nodded silently while his furrowed eyebrows gave hints of his attempts to recognize what she was talking about.

“Oh,  _ that _ ,” Levi replied flatly.

“You don’t seem very excited by that idea,” Petra observed, tilting her head while we exited the mall and returned to the truck.

“It isn’t that I’m not excited, I just know you’re gonna get your ass handed to you,” Levi said competitively, narrowing his eyes and smirking at the redhead as she walked beside him.

“I don’t know about that,” Petra laughed when we began to pile back into the vehicle.

“So the arcade, then?” Ollie confirmed, only starting the engine once we had all given him a nod of affirmation.

We began to drive, and I could hear Petra softly instructing Ollie on where to take us before Riko’s voice squealed over the other girl’s, “Oh my God, pull over right there.” Levi and I nearly rolled into one another at the force of Oluo’s sharp turn but he parked and the three of them disembarked from the cab once again. 

“Sorry, I’ve just been looking for Bonzo Dog for like, a million years, and they have the album I’m looking for in the window,” Riko explained, but her explanation didn’t make any sense to me until I saw that we had parked at a small brick record store, only about two blocks down from the mall. 

“No problem,” I replied, following her to the storefront, where we gathered for a moment before those in need of a new record began their search. 

“I’ll buy it for you, Babe,” Oluo offered, squeezing his girlfriend’s shoulders. “You got a birthday coming up, you know.”

“Aww, thanks!” Riko grinned, flipping her hair over her shoulders and leading Ollie through the front door of the shop. 

“I guess we just wait out here then, yeah?” I asked, and Petra nodded.

“I’m actually gonna go find an alley to smoke a cigarette in, if anybody else is interested,” she said, but Levi shook his head. “If not, just come get me when they come back out.”

“You go ahead. I’m good for right now,” Levi said while he sat on the curb of the quiet side street. I knew that it would crowd up once people started to get off work, but I was grateful to have such a quiet slice of the city for the time being. Petra rounded the corner at the end of the block while I sat beside Levi.

“So, uh, you got that part you needed, huh?” I asked, smiling politely when Levi nodded.

“Yeah, mhm. Last one in stock, too,” he said confidently, proud of his purchase.

“How much longer ‘till it’s done?”

“Oh, not too much longer. I just have some minor tweaking and repairs now, and then the cosmetics, and then the registration, and we’ll have a roadworthy vehicle,” he answered, and I couldn’t help but notice that Levi had said “we’ll”, and not “I’ll.” 

“That’s bomb as fuck, man,” I expressed, meeting his eyes and smiling at him. 

“You know, you have the most mesmerising eyes. I can’t tell if they’re green or blue,” he said, scrutinizing me for a moment, before shrugging and forfeiting. 

Riko and Ollie emerged from the store with the album, immediately telling us about all of the cool artists and albums they had seen while inside. While Riko was talking I heard a distant yelp that knocked me out of my half-interested stupor. I perked up, but nobody else seemed to notice.

“Did anybody else hear that?” I asked the group, but was only met with shrugs from the others.

“Hear what?” Levi asked, but before I could respond, an unmistakably panicked “Levi!” was screamed from the direction Petra had gone, the end of the word cut off in an alarming manner. In the blink of an eye, Levi was running, and I bolted after him around the corner, looking over my shoulder as Riko and Ollie tried to keep pace with us, the new record now laying forgotten on the sidewalk. 

“What are you doing, man? You didn’t say you’d hurt her!” A female voice cried from within the alley.

“Shut the fuck up!” A rougher, oddly familiar sounding voice snapped from the same location. 

As we approached the first alley, sounds of a scuffle became louder, and my jaw nearly hit the ground when I saw Zeke standing over Petra. One of his hands was clamped over her mouth while she struggled against the grasp of his other, and when he noticed us, he dropped a cigarette on the ground that he’d been pushing into Petra’s forearm. 

“Oops,” he said with a sickening smirk spreading across his face while he pressed his hand harder over Petra’s mouth, stepping on the embers that fell from her skin.

It was then that I noticed that there were three other people in the alley with them, two of them trying to gain ground and pull Zeke away from Petra. Hard as they tried, however, they were being fended off by another muscular blonde boy that looked like he could have been Zeke’s brother.

Levi instantly lunged at Zeke, who took Petra roughly by her narrow shoulders and shoved her behind him. Oluo and I were quick to follow suit, taking on the other boy who tried to keep us from reaching him. 

“What the hell is your problem, man?” Ollie snapped, landing a heavy punch on the other blonde boy, who was then gripped on either side by the other two onlookers, a tall dark haired boy and a tough looking blonde girl, so that he couldn’t try to interfere with what was about to happen. It was chaos, the small, once empty alley now a wild mosh pit, writhing with violence that brewed inside.

I rushed to retrieve Petra from behind Zeke while he was distracted with Levi and saw a blistering burn on her arm, but all movement came to a screeching halt when the crack of a gunshot rang out from the middle of the frey. All of us immediately stopped what we were doing and looked towards the source of the sound. Levi held the revolver he’d found at the mine in the air, pointing it skyward before gripping Zeke by the shirt and slamming him against the brick building, holding him in place with the barrel of the gun pointed at his chest. 

“You think I won’t fucking kill you right now?! I’ll fucking kill you! How dare you fucking touch her! Go anywhere near her and I’ll pull this fucking trigger, right fucking now, motherfucker,” Levi shouted, pulling Zeke towards him and then checking him back into the wall like he was a human battering ram. “Everybody put your hands in the air if you wanna stay alive,” he commanded, snapping into a chillingly stoic composure before delivering a powerful, calculated blow of the pistol to the side of Zeke’s head, watching silently as we all raised our hands. I alone knew that there were no more bullets in the gun, but Levi’s bluff was working wonders on the other brawlers. I couldn’t help but be a little proud at his quick thinking, happy that he hadn’t used the bullet on a person. 

Riko watched in horror from the mouth of the alley, and Oluo hands were shaking as he lifted them to the level of his eyes. Petra was also trembling as I stepped in front of her and lifted my hands as well, making sure she was secure behind me before looking away from her. 

“Alright, Reiner, Annie, Bertolt, if I hear anything about this ever again, I will make sure that your lives are no longer worth living. I will hurt everything you’ve ever loved if you don’t get the hell out of here right now. You can have Zeke back when I’m done with him. Don’t go far. Ollie, Riko, make sure they don’t make a run for it,” Levi instructed, pointing the gun away from Zeke, who lay on the concrete, crumpled and freshly pistol-whipped, no longer much of a threat. He instead pointed the gun towards the three other people that seemed to know Zeke one way or another, keeping it trained on them until they were out of the alley, guarded by Oluo and Riko, who nervously glanced at Levi every chance they got.

Zeke coughed as Levi yanked him back to his feet and pinned him back up against the bricks. The dark haired boy turned towards me with white hot fury on his face and said, “Do you want me to hurt him, Petra?”

The sniffling girl emerged from behind me and shook her head. “No, Levi,” she whispered.

“Are you sure? I really wanna fucking hurt him,” Levi pushed, his voice shaking with ire while he kept Zeke in place. 

“Levi! Look out!” Riko called, and my eyes darted over towards the other five, who were clamoring after a straggler. I felt myself snap into action when I saw that Oluo was staggering backwards, having been suckerpunched by the blonde boy who now barrelled towards Levi at an alarming rate. I sprinted past Petra to try to intercept him, but he shoved me out of his way like I was a ragdoll. I lost my balance and watched helplessly as the other two in Zeke’s party ran after the boy who, upon reaching Levi, gripped him by the back of his neck and threw him face first into the brick wall. 

Petra screamed while I scrambled to my feet and dove for the pistol that clattered to the ground beside Levi’s now limp body. I knew I needed to keep up the illusion that it was loaded to give myself the upper hand, so I picked it up and kept it aimed at Zeke, who was still mostly incapacitated. 

“Don’t even think about getting up, you worthless piece of shit,” I snapped at Zeke, knowing that the other two were looking at the other boy, a hauntingly violent expression in the eyes of the young woman. I knew exactly what would happen next if I didn’t intervene, so I didn’t move a muscle while the other two tackled the blonde boy to the ground. 

The tall boy kept the other boy still while the blonde girl, who I assumed was Annie, gave him the ass-whooping of his life. I was a little shocked at the punch that little girl packed, but her blue eyes were fierce and her jaw was set while she landed several respectable blows on the squirming, gasping boy beneath her.

“Annie, stop,” he croaked, spitting out a tooth as she loosened her grip on him.

“You’re just as bad as Zeke, dude,” she spat as she climbed off of him. “I’m done with you people.”

“Yeah, same here. Reiner, we were cool, but after today, I’d rather walk back to Duplaine than ever be anywhere near either of you ever again,” the tall boy sighed. 

“You  _ fought _ us when we tried to help her. Are you serious right now? I’m so done. You both are fucking disgusting,” Annie muttered while Bertolt gripped the weakened blonde by his hair and dragged him out of the alley again. When I turned back around, Petra was on her knees beside Levi, who hadn’t moved from where he’d fallen. In that moment, I felt all eyes on me, the one with the gun, for the next course of action.

“Alright, here’s what’s gonna happen,” I said, taking charge of the situation. “You guys get your boy and get the hell out of here,” I instructed, nudging Zeke with the toe of my boot while he laid on the concrete, bleeding from the side of his head where Levi had hit him. 

“He isn’t our problem anymore, this was kinda the final straw for us,” Bertolt said softly, his voice carrying a quiet firmness with it. “Reiner can get him. I don’t wanna touch either of them with a ten foot pole.”

“So be it,” I said, nodding at the boy who was now bleeding from his mouth as a direct result of Annie’s beating. He staggered towards the taller boy, but before he reached him, in a brief loss of my temper, I brought my fist down on him a final time before his one remaining ally reached him. “That’s for Levi,” I snapped, relieved that nobody tried to stop me, and reveling in the feeling of kicking that bastard while he was down. 

  
  


Removing his hand from his bleeding mouth and wrapping his arms under Zeke’s, Reiner began pulling him with him as he backed out of the alley obediently. Once they were far enough away, Reiner began helping Zeke to his feet and slinging one of Zeke’s lean arms over his broad shoulder and staggering out of sight.

Once they were far enough away, I lowered the gun and approached Petra and Levi, who still wasn’t moving. As I got closer, I could hear shallow, raspy breaths coming from his lips between Petra’s quiet sobs. On his face were small scrapes from the rough bricks, and I was sure he’d end up with a shiner because of the angle he’d hit the wall. Blood ran in small rivulets from his nostrils, and I felt tears beginning to prick my eyes. 

“Get his head elevated,” Riko said as she and Oluo approached us. Petra nodded and wiped her nose, lifting his head onto her lap and whispering quiet apologies to him while she cleared his hair from his face. I was absolutely gutted, my feet cemented to the concrete beneath them. I wanted to drop to my knees and hold him in my arms, but I couldn’t move. 

After another minute, Levi began to stir, soft groans the first signs of his reanimation, but once he’d woken up some, he snapped his body upright, clenching his fists and preparing to be thrown back into the fight. He then scanned his surroundings with narrowed eyes. “Are- are they gone?” he asked, looking at me and nodding when he saw his gun in my hands. 

“Yeah, Reiner and Zeke are gone. The other two are still here, though,” I told him, reaching down to help him to his feet. He had a hard time keeping his balance, though, and fell into my chest.

“Fuck, my face hurts,” he grumbled into my shirt, wrapping his arms around my waist to steady himself. I could feel my torso getting wet as his blood seeped through the thin fabric of my tee shirt, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. 

“I believe that,” I snorted, trying not to let him see how worried I was, tensing all the muscles in my body to keep from shaking. 

“Let’s get outta here,” Oluo said, rubbing the beginnings of a bruise on his cheekbone. 

“Um, I hate to ask, but we’re kinda out of a ride,” Annie said cautiously. “Is their room with you guys?”

Oluo’s eyes darted to Riko, who nodded at them. “We can make room. Come on,” she said, leading the group of us out of the alley and back towards the truck.

“Rain check on the Pong match, Ral,” Levi croaked, his voice a strained, delirious mumble. He was still clinging to me while we approached the vehicle, not able to walk on his own. 

He let go of me in an attempt to climb into the bed, but lost his balance while he was hoisting himself over the tailgate and fell the rest of the way into the back of the truck. I quickly hopped in after him to make sure he hadn’t just hurt himself more. Seeing that he hadn’t, I pulled him to me and held his body in a vice grip with my arms while Annie and Bertolt climbed in after us. I knew I couldn’t be too obvious with my affections, but that was pushed to the back burner as I dealt with the situation before me.

“You’re gonna be okay,” I whispered to him while Oluo started the engine and peeled out of the parking space. I looked towards the cab and saw that Riko had not forgotten her new record, which gave me some relief for whatever reason. “You’re gonna be okay,” I repeated, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to let him go for the rest of the drive.

“Uh, I’m Annie, and this is Bert,” the girl said, introducing herself. She extended a hand, but I didn’t take it, because every moment I spent shaking her hand was a moment I wasn’t holding onto Levi. I nodded at her and shot her a nervous grin.

“I’m Eren,” I replied, rubbing circles into Levi’s shoulders while he dropped his face into the crook of my neck, his legs straddling either side of my hips while we made our way back out onto the highway.

“And I’m Levi,” Levi mumbled into my neck, too out of it to know he didn’t need to introduce himself to people he already knew. 

“We know, Love,” I whispered under my breath, hoping that the other two hadn’t heard me call him that. I insisted that Levi come home with me, and upon our entry into my house, I braced myself for what I was afraid would be World War III.


	31. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy Wednesdayyyyy!

I pulled Levi through my front door and right into Farlan, accidentally walking into him without looking. He whipped around and immediately, the look of confusion on his face turned into total shock. “Woah!” he exclaimed while Levi leaned into me, trying to straighten up.

“Hello, Mr. Jaeger,” Levi said quietly, absentmindedly reaching out to shake his hand. 

“What happened here, guys?” Farlan asked, before looking over his shoulder and calling out to Isabel, “Iz, come here, please. You’re gonna want to see this.”

“Petra’s piece of shit ex-boyfriend, that’s what,” I snapped at him. I was angrier than I thought I was, but I figured that I was still processing everything that had just happened. Levi rocked back and forth on his feet, eventually leaning back into me again for support. “I think he has a concussion,” I told Farlan while Isabel made her way into the front room. 

“Holy Shit!” she gasped when she processed what she saw before her. “Are you two okay?” she asked, genuine worry in her eyes when she looked at me, which eased my nerves a little. 

“I think he’s got a concussion,” I repeated for her, holding tighter to Levi as he sagged further in my arms. “Do you know how to help?”

“Unfortunately there isn’t much we can do right now, unless it’s really bad, in which case we take him to the hospital,” she explained to me, tying her loose red curls into a low ponytail. 

“No hospitals,” Levi mumbled. “Don’t have…. Health insurance.”

She took Levi’s face gently into her hands and spoke to him, “Look at me, honey, I have to check your pupils.”

Levi raised his gaze to Isabel while she looked fixedly into his eyes, gently turning his face from side to side. “Are you done?” he asked.

“Just a second, I’m gonna have you follow my finger,” she instructed, moving her finger slowly across his line of sight, watching his eyes to make sure both were still in working order. “You hit your head pretty hard, there. But you’ll be alright. We don’t need to go to the hospital, but if it gets worse, I might have to take you, okay?”

“Please don’t,” he said lazily while I adjusted my grip on him, to make sure he wouldn’t slip.

“Um, Eren, I think you should go make sure he gets cleaned off. He can stay here tonight,” Isabel said, which came as a shock to me, considering that I would likely have to come in and check on him every once in a while to make sure he hadn’t slipped in the shower or fallen asleep and drowned in the bath. 

“Yeah, that’s probably the best thing we can do for him right now. He won’t be able to stand in a shower. Why don’t you go draw him a bath upstairs?” Farlan said, and I nodded, leading Levi towards the stairs.

When I passed Farlan, he gripped me by the shoulder and whispered, “I’m trusting you right now,” at a volume that Levi wouldn’t be able to hear. 

I nodded again, vowing not to break the trust I had been given while I pulled him up the stairs. We made our way to the bathroom beside my bedroom and I lowered him onto the closed toilet lid while I turned on the hot water.

“I feel like shit,” he whispered, shaking his head at me from his perch. 

“Do you need me to help you?” I asked, turning to face him again and watching him slowly nod his head. 

“I wish the answer was no. This is pretty embarrassing,” Levi murmured, tugging weakly at the hem of his shirt, untucking it from his pants and trying to get it over his head, mostly unsuccessfully. Letting out a quiet breath, I tugged his shirt the rest of the way off of his body.

“It isn’t embarrassing, Levi. If you need help, ask for it. You’re not getting any judgement from me,” I said, petting the top of his head while the bath began to fill up. I shuddered when his arms pulled me closer.

“Whatever, just don’t ever mention this to anybody,” Levi snapped, resting his forehead against my navel.

“Scout’s honor,” I smiled at him before asking, “Okay, do you need help with your pants and shoes?”

“Shoes, yes. I feel like my head will explode if I bend down that far, but a no on the pants,” Levi answered, and immediately, I got to work unlacing his boots and tugging them off of his feet. I pulled his socks from his feet as well and set them aside. 

“I can give you a minute to get in if you want,” I offered, pointing at the door, wanting him to be comfortable more than anything else.

“No, that’s fine. I don’t wanna, like, fall and die,” he scoffed, unbuckling his belt and unbuttoning his jeans. “But averting your gaze is always appreciated.”

“Of course,” I said, closing my eyes and turning away from him, giving him a moment to get undressed. I heard the quiet rustle of clothing hitting the floor and kept my eyes closed while I helped Levi into the bath.

“Oops, I forgot my underwear,” Levi sighed, clicking his tongue and muttering, “Too late now, I guess. You can open your eyes.”

I allowed my eyes to open again and saw Levi staring down at his submerged underwear that drifted loosely around his thighs. “Well they’ll dry. If you wanna get ‘em off, I can close my eyes again.”

“No it’s okay, I don’t think I can move that much right now, that made me all woozy,” he said while I turned off the hot water and heard the final drops of water drip against the surface of the bath. 

“Okay,” I replied, reaching for a clean washcloth for Levi, lathering it up with soap and dabbing at the scrapes on his face.

“Um, ow,” Levi snapped, opening his eyes for a moment, just to glare at me with them. “A little warning would have been nice.”

“You’ll get over it,” I smiled, continuing to dab at the dried blood that stuck to his skin. “Plus, you wouldn’t want  _ bacteria _ to get in and give you an infection,” I pushed, poking fun at his affinity for cleanliness while I actively cleaned him off.

“Asshole,” Levi breathed, closing his eyes and leaning back against the tub he laid in. “You… are… an asshole.”

“I know,” I chuckled in response, tossing the dirtied rag into the sink and grabbing another one to clean his body with. I silently rubbed his body down with another sudsy washcloth, not wanting to make him uncomfortable by forcing small talk while I washed him. After I had cleaned every exposed part of his body, I passed the bar of soap to him and said, “I trust you can clean where you need to clean under those boxers.”

“If I was just a little more manipulative, I’d make you do it,” he mumbled, throwing a lazy grin in my direction, and I averted my eyes when he slipped his hand down the front of his pants. When he was done, he rinsed the bar of soap off in the bath water before passing it to me again. 

“Alright, lemme get your hair, and you’ll be all done,” I informed him, but when I looked back at him, both of his arms slowly lifted from the bath and wrapped around the back of my neck, pulling my body to his. I gripped the sides of the tub to make sure I didn’t fall in, but let him continue hugging me, despite my clothes getting wet. I knew that I would need to shower as well, so it didn’t matter all that much to me. I felt my heart pounding so hard I could hear my pulse rattling my eardrums. 

“Eren, gimme a second,” he whispered, lowering his head onto my shoulder and letting out a long exhale. “I just want you to hold me for a second.”

“I- um, yeah, okay. Nothing wrong with an innocent bathtub hug, right?” I laughed to myself, leaning in further and wrapping my arms around him.

“You’re so warm,” Levi murmured, his lips moving against the skin of my neck while he spoke. “I wish we could stay like this.”

“I mean I doubt they’ll make me take you downstairs and have you sleep on the couch. I’ll sleep next to you tonight, how about that?” I bargained, flustered by his sudden affection. I knew it was likely reduced inhibitions as a result of the recent head trauma, but it still managed to throw me off guard. I wasn’t used to hearing him be so candid with me.

“That sounds,” he said, pausing for a moment before saying, “like the best thing since sliced bread.”

“Alright, then let me wash your hair, so I can shower and we can get to bed,” I directed, pulling away from him so that I could do what I had set out to do. 

“Okay,” Levi nodded, and cupping my hands, I began to wet his hair and scrub it full of shampoo. I felt an ache in my heart while I sat there, washing his hair and wishing I could tell him I loved him. I finished washing his hair, and as I stood him up to help him out of the bath, he spoke again, “You better be standing me up to hose me off. I don’t want my fistfight soup on my skin tonight.”

“I can rinse you off,” I chuckled, gently ruffling his hair while I pulled the drain plug, the quickly draining bath making a small whirlpool in the water that remained. Steadying Levi on his feet, I turned on the shower, walking Levi through the lowering water to the spray from the shower head. 

“Woah. There it goes. Vertigo,” Levi said, nearly toppling to the ground, and he would have if I hadn’t leaned my entire torso into the shower to catch him. “Hey, look, we’re both wet.”

“So we are,” I scoffed, looking at the loopy boy that stood before me. My entire upper body was soaked by the time I finished rinsing Levi off, but knowing I was helping him made it all worth it. “Okay, do you think you can sit on the edge of the bath or the toilet without falling off while I go and get you a change of clothes?”

“I have- oh fuck, I left my shit in Ollie’s truck didn’t I?” he asked, and I realized that in my worried rush, I had forgotten to check the cab for his things. 

“You might have. I’m sorry. I should have grabbed that,” I replied, helping him step out of the bath.

“Yeah I can sit here. I’m not a baby,” he muttered, wincing as he landed a little too hard on the lid of the toilet. 

“Says the one that needs my help to stand up right now,” I grinned, laughing as he flipped me the bird while I made my way down the narrow landing to my bedroom, grabbing two changes of clothes, so that I would have my pyjamas in the bathroom when it came time for me to shower. 

I returned with a tee shirt and comfortable flannel pyjama bottoms for Levi, making a very similar fashion choice with a tee shirt and track shorts. When I got back, Levi was right where I left him, but he was shivering. 

“Hope you don’t mind going commando,” I scoffed, reaching for a towel and drying him off. I wasn’t sure he would be comfortable wearing underwear I’d worn before, even if it was clean, and so I’d chosen him a pair of pants that wouldn’t really show whether he was wearing underwear or not.

“Nope, don’t care,” he said matter-of-factly, but I could see the mind-numbing exhaustion behind his steady voice. 

“Do you need help with your boxers?” I asked, and the look on his face was the only answer I really needed, but I waited for him to voice a reply nonetheless, not wanting to accidentally cross a boundary.

“My head is throbbing, and I can’t stand up on my own, so, uh, if you wouldn’t mind. Just, like,” he trailed off for a moment before saying, “Strictly business.”

“Of course,” I assured him, standing him up and pulling the elastic waistband of his underwear down, not sure where to fix my gaze. There was one thing that I obviously couldn’t look at, but I had a feeling it’d be even weirder if I maintained eye contact, so I just closed them again, draping the boxers over the shower rod before giving him a hand with his clean change of clothing. Opening my eyes, I grasped his hand and led him slowly down the narrow hallway to my bedroom, pulling back the sheet and helping him into it. “I’m gonna get you some ice for your forehead, and then I’m gonna take a shower. Think you’re gonna be okay if I leave for like twenty minutes?”

“Well, I mean I’m pretty sure I’m not just gonna drop dead, so take that how you will,” Levi snickered. “Lemme put it this way: even if I did drop dead, it isn’t my problem anymore, anyway,” he laughed, and I was more than thrilled to see a genuine smile on his face. 

“You dick,” I laughed in response, “you know what I mean.”

“I’ll be fine, Eren,” he assured me, his voice calmly amused while I took my lead. First I walked down to the kitchen and grabbed a bag of frozen peas from the freezer. 

“Is he alright?” Isabel asked from the living room.

“He’s fine. Pretty bad headache, and pretty lightheaded, but I don’t think it’s anything life-threatening. He’s got a nice lookin’ shiner, though,” I replied, as I finally removed my shoes and began to start for the stairs again. “He’s really tired, so I’ll monitor him a little. Wake him every hour, and whatever.”

“Are  _ you _ okay?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow. I was surprised she hadn’t asked about why I was all wet yet, but to my surprise, it never came up.

“I’m just worried about  _ him _ ,” I shrugged, my lips pressed into a small smile.

“I can see that,” she smiled, getting to her feet from the couch and slowly making her way over to me. “Farlan is picking up pizza, because I don’t feel like cooking, so if either of you boys are hungry, that’ll be here before the hour’s up.”

“Thank you,” I answered quietly.

“I think Farlan would back me when I say this, but I’m pleasantly surprised by your relationship with him. We’ll have to talk more about this in the future, but it’s very clear to me now that you care about him, and that’s really reassuring.”

“Of course I care about him,” I replied quietly. 

“I believe you,” she said, an understated grin painting her face and dimpling her cheeks. “We’ll talk more later. Go take care of that boy. If you want, I can bring you guys plates of dinner when Farlan gets back if you don’t think Levi’ll make it down the stairs again.”

“Yeah, I honestly don’t even know that he’ll be awake when I get back upstairs, but if you wanna bring it up, I can try to get him to eat it a little later,” I responded, watching Isabel nod in agreement.

“Sounds like a plan. See you a little later,” she said gently, and for once, I felt like my home was tranquil. I returned to my bedroom to find Levi sitting up against my headboard, using a pillow to prop himself up. 

“Hey there,” he mumbled, when I approached the side of the bed he was on, sitting just past his feet and passing him the frozen peas.

“Just put this where it hurts,” I told him, watching him press it to his eye socket, where he’d initially made contact with the wall. It was a little jarring to see him hurt, in all honesty. I just wanted to fix it for him, but there were some things that would take time to heal. It felt like a sharp pain in my body, knowing that there was so little I could actually do to make him feel better. 

“I have a request,” he said quietly, removing the ice from his eye to address me.

“What do you need?” I asked, squeezing his shin through the comforter of my bed. 

“When you get all clean, will you come here and lay with me?” he asked, and I immediately started nodding.

“Frankly, that was my only plan for tonight,” I replied, wanting nothing more than to lean in and kiss him, but once the thought crossed my mind, I stood up and excused myself to shower, not wanting to succumb to temptation when I was doing so well combating it. I closed myself into the bathroom, turning the shower on and peeling my clothing from my body. I cleaned myself as quickly as possible, not wanting to be away from Levi a second longer than I had to. 

I dried off and changed into my sleepwear before hanging my shirt over the curtain rod beside Levi’s underwear and throwing all of our dry dirty clothing into the hamper and returning to Levi’s bedside, where I found him sitting just where he’d been before, but he looked like he’d fallen asleep sitting up, but when I got closer, he opened his eyes and looked up at me. 

“You know the drill,” he smirked, pulling the sheets back so that I could climb into bed with him. I slid between the sheets and felt my heart warm right up when Levi’s arms wrapped around my waist, the side of his head resting on my chest. The word was right on my tongue, the word I knew I’d have to use with him at some point, the word that simultaneously filled me with sheer terror, and giddy delight. 

“Levi, I- I-” I started to say, nearly telling him that I loved him, but changing my mind at the last second, not wanting to stress him out any further.

“You what?” he asked, tracing shapes into my chest with his index finger.

“I really care about you. Like, a lot. Like, if you knew how much, I’m afraid you’d leave,” I whispered, reaching down and wrapping my arms around him. 

“Well, I can’t go anywhere, right this minute, so consider me a captive audience,” Levi shrugged.

“No, I mean it, I think you’d run for the hills,” I scoffed, shaking my head at him. 

“What gives you that impression?” Levi asked me, scooting up so that our heads rested on the same pillow.

“You have a thing against feeling like people have something on you, so you’d rather shove everything into organized little boxes than admit that you have weaknesses,” I replied.

“If you’re referring to yourself as a weakness of mine, I’ve already consciously made the decision that there are worse weaknesses to have than you, Jaeger,” Levi hummed, and I felt my heart twist in my chest, like it was being wrung out.

“Really?” I asked, searching his sleepy eyes for anything to the contrary, but came up with nothing. 

“Really,” he whispered, reaching down and squeezing my hand. 

“Levi, can I be completely honest with you?” I asked him.

“I would hope you’ve been honest with me for the duration of whatever this is,” he replied, giving me a nervous smile.

“I am so in love with you that it physically hurts me sometimes,” I whispered, cringing and waiting for the torrent I was sure to face as a result of my confession. 

“Well, it’s about time somebody said it,” he snorted, leaning up and pressing a kiss to my jaw. “For the record, I’m pretty sure I love you more.”

I felt my eyes fill with tears when he said that. I had never felt more secure in my entire life than I did laying in my bed with the person I loved, knowing that he loved me, too. “Really?”

“Do you really think  _ I _ would be the one to joke about that kinda thing?” he asked me rhetorically. “I’ve never felt this way about another person in my life. And over the years, I just didn’t think I got it. I figured that needing somebody else in your life came naturally to some people, but not to others. And maybe it does, and maybe I’m really fucked up, but you know what? I love you so much that it scares me, Eren, because, well, sometimes, I get really violent, like I did today, and I just don’t ever wanna hurt you. Doesn’t mean I regret doing what I did, but I just am afraid that I’ll lose my grip one day, and I won’t be able to turn it back off again.”

“You won’t,” I said, wrapping my arms around him and pulling him into my chest, not sure I’d be able to handle talking about dark things at the time being. “You’re not allowed.”

“Says who?” 

“Says me. But do you wanna know something?”

“Sure.”

“I got a pretty cheap shot in on Zeke while you were down, and I have no regrets,” I smirked, pressing a light kiss to his forehead, careful not to jostle him too much with any sudden movements. 

“For the record, first thing I registered when I woke up and realized that the fight was over was that it was fucking hot that you were holding my gun,” he chuckled, giving my arm a quick squeeze.

“Oh, by the way, that was really some genius level shit you pulled, firing the bullet into the air and using that to bluff your way into an advantage,” I admitted, pushing my fingertips through his hair.

“So, you remembered there was just the one bullet, huh?” he smirked, before closing his eyes and settling back on my chest again.

“‘Course I did,” I smiled, pressing kisses to his knuckles while his muscles slowly relaxed in my arms.

“Good,” he nodded lazily.

“I’m gonna have to get you up every hour, to make sure everything’s alright and you’re not, like, dead, or something,” I remembered to warn him as he began to doze off.

“Okay, I don’t really mind, as long as it’s you and not an alarm clock,” he snickered. “Don’t go anywhere, alright?” There was something magical in the air that night, and it was certainly a surreal feeling to hear him ask me not to leave him.

“I’m not going anywhere. Sweet dreams, see you in an hour,” I assured him, and before even five minutes had passed, he was snoring. It occurred to me that he had stayed awake just to talk to me, given that he was already exhausted when we got to the house and stayed up with me for nearly another two hours, and I had a feeling I was going to be grateful he had stayed up with me for the rest of my life. 


	32. Chapter 30

The night was long and full of intermittent check-ins with Levi, who was more tired every time I woke him up. I felt bad that I had to get him up so often, but I wasn’t willing to risk anything that first night. If he was mostly returning to normal by the next night, I wouldn’t have to keep such a close eye on him, which is what I was hoping for. The next morning, I was exhausted, and after waking Levi up a final time at around seven in the morning, I knew I wouldn’t last much longer without falling asleep.

“Good morning,” I mumbled, my eyelids too heavy to lift very far.

“Hey, Eren,” Levi said, but it took me far too long to process what he’d said. 

“Hi,” I said, my voice coming quietly from my throat, my lips too laxed to form the word.

“You look rough,” he whispered, scooting closer to me and resting his head on my shoulder. 

“You should see the other guy,” I snorted half-heartedly, shaking my head and letting my eyes close completely while I gestured to his face. His cheek and eye socket where the impact had occurred were swollen and black with bruises. It hurt to look at. 

“Okay, rude. Are you sure I’m not gonna die now?” he asked sarcastically, yawning halfway into his question. 

“Yeah, you can do whatever you want. Just don’t be a dumbass,” I murmured, feeling my heavy breaths take hold of my chest and sink me further into the mattress. 

“I’m probably gonna have a couple uninterrupted hours, if that’s okay with you,” he replied, settling down beside me while my head fell into the pillow beneath me. I didn’t remember falling asleep after that.

I had had a very uneventful night, not even including the ordeal with Levi. I was sneaking out after he’d fallen asleep every hour to have a meeting with Farlan and Isabel. 

Over the weekend, they had gotten a tape from Hanji, and had waited to listen until I had a chance to listen to it with them. She had said that she needed two of us to leave for twenty-four hours to appear in court and testify, showing up at the post office early the next morning. She explained that if all three of us left, we would close window of time we’d accessed without having passed the first murder, which could be detrimental, and require a complete restart on the penalization. The only problem was that two of us had to leave, and twenty-four hours on the outside was six days on the inside. I was more than a little nervous about the requirement, because either I went with one of them to hear what they would testify, or I would have to wait for six days to hear if they’d thrown me under the bus. I could feel panic flit around my insides when the recording came to an end, and I had to focus on the grains of wood in the coffee table to keep from losing my shit. 

“So, uh, Eren. You’re kinda the head guy,” Isabel said quietly, “So I’ll let you make this call. Do you think you need to stay back here? If we’d have listened to it over the weekend, at least we would have had some more warning.”

“Well, it’s fine. We still got time,” Farlan responded with a confident smirk playing on his lips. “Okay, so, yeah. Eren, who do you need going and who do you need staying?”

“Just a second. What time is it?” I asked, worried about Levi, who had been sleeping upstairs. I hadn’t checked on him in almost forty five minutes, and I was beginning to get nervous.

“Twelve-thirty,” Farlan replied, gesturing towards the stairs while he spoke. “Go check on him and come back, alright? We need to make a decision soon, or we’re gonna be more underprepared than we already are. She said she needed two of us at six in the morning and we need to figure out who we’re gonna send.”

“Right, okay,” I nodded, stressed out of my mind with the weight that rested on my shoulders. I was glad we had listened to the tape before we showed up late to court, but my stress levels were off the charts. I pushed open the door and crept into my pitch black bedroom, lit only by the lights downstairs. I saw a lump under my covers and was relieved that the lump was breathing. I rested my hand on Levi’s shoulder and gently shook him, hoping to rouse him into consciousness with the movement. “Hey,” I whispered. “Hey, Levi.”

“Mmmm,” he hummed in a half-sleeping daze, rolling over to look at me. 

“You still alive?” I asked, leaning over him while I spoke.

“Mhm,” he yawned. 

“How bad does it hurt?” I asked for the fifth time that night as I’d come in to check on him. 

“I dunno. Not that bad,” he said, shrugging his shoulders at me while he got comfortable, and a large part of me just wanted to crawl into bed with him and fall asleep, but Farlan and Isabel were downstairs waiting for me, and I had a job to do. We were holding a meeting in the master bedroom instead of in the living room in case our voices carried throughout the house, so once I was downstairs, I tiptoed quietly back to their bedroom, closing the door behind me. 

“Is he alright?” Isabel asked, worry creasing her brow while she folded her arms at me. 

“He’s fine,” I replied, sitting in a rocking chair in the corner of the room while Farlan and Isabel resumed their places on the bed. I knew they were waiting for my decision, and so I gave it to them. “Look guys, I understand that the integrity of this mission was corrupted by me, and I’ve been a shitty partner, and a shitty teammate. So, I’m not gonna force you to lie for me. If you want to turn me in, do it. You two should go, because if anything, I’d take your testimonies over mine.”

I knew it was a potentially jeopardizing move, giving them the power and the privacy to turn me in, but strategically it was the most sound. If Levi was going to get a fair trial, the court needed to hear from the most candor mouths. Farlan and Isabel didn’t speak a word for what felt like hours before Isabel said, “Wow.”

“Wow, what?” I challenged her, staring pointedly into her eyes. 

“I just wasn’t expecting you to say that,” she said, but I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew how important this case was to them, but people love to be given the illusion of a choice. I knew that the odds of them trying to ruffle feathers were slim, because then the project would be abandoned completely. I knew that if they didn’t lie for me, they would certainly do their best to avoid the topic of my relationship to Levi. They would be less upset with the situation if they were actively contributing in keeping it that way. 

They didn’t have to know my reasoning behind my decision, as long as I gave them the idea that they were the ones in power, and it wasn’t like I’d lied. They would certainly have been the least unbiased to the eyes of the law, but this was the career stint that would put their names and faces in the paper. They’d both be set for life, publish dozens of ghostwritten books, and show up on talk shows and morning news if they saw this through. They were banking a lot on the success of this historical project, and I knew they wouldn’t give it up for the opportunity to be just, because we were three selfish people that didn’t mind taking advantage of other people to get what we wanted. 

“That was really big of you, Eren,” Farlan murmured, staring at me with trust in his eyes.

“I mean, it’s true. If we want a fair trial, I think you two are better than me,” I said, hoping they couldn’t hear the cool notes in my voice. “I’ll leave what you tell the Judge up to you.”

“Okay,” Isabel nodded. “Then we can start writing our statements and preparing for questioning and run them by you when we’re finished.”

“Sounds fine by me,” I nodded, feeling relief for the first time in a while regarding the court situation. If I needed to use subtle manipulation to get there, so be it, but I couldn’t leave Levi then. Not right after I’d told him I loved him. I was excused for the night, but was completely wired until Farlan and Isabel left the next morning, and then for an hour after that, I watched Levi sleep and tried to think of what I would tell him after the other two people in the household had left in the middle of the night. By the time I fell asleep, however, I was much too tired to remember to relay any kind of message, and so fell asleep contentedly beside Levi, cringing at the fact that I would have to be up for my alarm in less than an hour. 

When my alarm went off I nearly screamed, as it felt like I had only closed my eyes for a couple of seconds. Groaning, I climbed out of bed and shut it off, debating whether or not it was acceptable to wear the same shirt I’d slept in to school.

“C’mon, Levi. We have to get to school,” I instructed and Levi climbed from the bed only to wrap his arms around my waist and press a kiss to my neck.

“Let’s stay home today,” he murmured into my collarbone, covered by a wrinkled cotton tee shirt.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” I said, trying to explain why I was being so insistent. “My aunt and uncle had to leave in the middle of the night last night because my cousin in law is in the hospital,” I explained the story the three of us had agreed upon the night prior. “I don’t know her, and they needed somebody to watch the house. So I have to be responsible if they’re gonna trust me again with something like this.”

“Jeez. Your family’s in the hospital a lot. How long are they gonna be gone for?” Levi asked, not releasing me from his arms. 

“They’re gonna be back in about a week.”

“Fuck that, I’m going back to bed,” he groaned, rubbing his uninjured eye and lying back down. 

“Okay, well, I should really go to school. See you afterwards?” I suggested. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need.”

“I’m sorry, I must’ve been unclear. I meant, “Fuck that, I’m going to bed and you’re coming with me,”” Levi snorted, reaching towards me from the pillows. I approached him, figuring I would give him a kiss before leaving the room to get ready, but as soon as I bent down within his reach, he flipped me onto the bed so that I now laid parallel to him. “Stay with me,” he whispered, resting his hand flat on my lower abdomen, and I was hyper aware of the tips of his fingers just barely brushing against the elastic of my shorts. I felt him press a kiss to the side of my head while his fingernails gently brushed the skin beneath the lower hem of my shirt. I felt a shiver run down my spine before I finally asked him.

“Are you trying to seduce me, Levi Ackerman?” I asked, searching for an answer somewhere in his expression.

“Is it working?” Levi asked, amusement playing in his dew colored irises. I was nervous, because I had to navigate things very carefully. Despite my active manipulation of my partners, I still had to hold my end of the deal. I had made a promise to them that I would wait until his eighteenth birthday, and I would do everything in my power to push it off.

“This might sound kinda weird, but would it be okay if we, um, waited for a little bit? I’m pretty tired right now,” I asked and I was surprised at how quickly his answer came. I wasn’t sure how long my willingness to wait would hold up, certain that if he’d asked again, I likely would have given him a different answer.

“Of course. We don’t have to do anything until we both feel like it,” Levi nodded, a smile in his eyes that didn’t come through on the rest of his relaxed expression. 

“Doesn’t mean I won’t kiss you, though,” I murmured, giving up on school for the day and turning towards Levi, catching his lips in a kiss while he weakly pulled me closer by my waist. I could tell he wasn’t quite himself yet. He was still sort of reeling from his injuries, which was more than understandable. 

When I pulled away, he gave me one of the most breathtaking smiles I’d ever seen on another person. “Hey, I love you,” he whispered, like we were children sharing some kind of secret.

“I love you, too,” I whispered back, more than willing to partake in the giddy surreptitiousness. 

“Good. Let’s love each other a shit load in our sleep, because I am ready to pass the fuck out,” Levi said, kissing me a final time on the forehead before we finally were able to doze off together. 

I wasn’t thinking about court, or Farlan, or Isabel. I wasn’t scared about the outcome of the next six days. All I thought about was Levi, feeling his chest rise and fall beneath my head, listening to the low thud of his heart as we both sank into a deep dreamless sleep, happily entangled with one another, and perfectly willing to waste the day away in exchange for a few hours of uninterrupted slumber, comfortable, finally, and safe in the arms of the one I loved.


	33. Chapter 31

Several hours later, after getting a sufficient amount of sleep, I woke up to the feeling of fingers raking through my hair. Letting out a quiet groan, I opened my eyes and was thrilled to see Levi lying with me.

“Hey, good afternoon,” Levi purred, leaning down and resting his chin on the top of my head. I woke up with my head on his shoulder, both my arms wrapped securely around his waist. I liked how warm I felt, lying in the pools of sunlight that embraced the both of us while the afternoon drained through the hourglass. 

“Hi,” I mumbled, pulling my arms tighter around his waist. 

“How are you doing?” he asked, his voice coming from low in his throat while he reached up to rub the sleep from his eyes. 

“I’m doing pretty good,” I whispered, placing my hand over his and sliding it up the side of his body until I came to a rest at his waist. He wiggled his fingers beneath my hand and smirked at me when I next met his eyes. 

“That’s good. Me, too,” he replied, smiling at me with eyes half closed. 

I let out an affirmative hum, before my instincts kicked in and I questioned him further, “Are you sure? Your head doesn’t hurt too bad?”

“What is this, The Spanish Inquisition?” Levi scoffed, wincing when I gently prodded around the welt on his eye socket. 

“It just might be, depending on how you answer,” I poked back, happy to shoot him a quick wink while he considered his response.

“Is that so?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow and allowing his lips to curl into a cunning smirk. “How do you plan on inquiring?” he challenged.

“I guess you’ll have to find out.” I said, chuckling while I regarded him. 

Levi fell back onto the pillows and let out a long sigh, “I’m doing fine. Obviously it’s all sore, and I think that my fine motor skills are pretty much shot for now, but I think it’ll be okay.”

“You’re sure?” I asked him, but he shrugged and turned the question back around on me.

“Are  _ you _ sure?” Levi remarked lazily lifting one of his eyebrows. “I’m okay, Eren.”

I gave him a soft affirmation, and then asked, “So, do you wanna come downstairs and get something to eat? I think there’s still some pizza from last night.”

“Ah, yes, cold pizza,” Levi snorted. “Sounds great.”

“It can be hot pizza if you wanna stick it in the microwave,” I offered.

“No, that’s fine. Cold pizza is fine. I was just messing around,” he replied, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, and gasping when he saw the clock. “Chrissakes, it’s four-thirty!”

“Do you have somewhere you need to be?” I asked, and Levi started to say something, but shook his head. We started for the stairs, though I was wary about his balance, and so I walked beside him in case he felt lightheaded. Unfortunately the stairs were quite narrow, so I just put my arm around his waist and guided him down. 

“I guess not, actually. I guess I forgot that we skipped school to catch up on our sleep. But considering Petra knows where you live, and that I’m with you, she might pop by without warning to check on us. She’s just kinda like that,” Levi explained, grabbing a slice of pizza from the box in the refrigerator. 

“You seem to know her really well,” I told him, smiling softly while I grabbed a slice of my own. 

“I’m just observant,” Levi said, shrugging his shoulders and taking a bite of his pizza. “It’s not that hard to pay attention.”

“That’s actually a sweet sentiment,” I replied, starting in on my slice of pizza as well. 

“I wouldn’t call it sweet. It’s more tactical, but yeah. I’ve noticed that most people are generally pretty absorbed with themselves, and I guess I kinda take it upon myself to understand what makes each person tick.”

“That’s an interesting way to look at it,” I replied, observing his features while he concentrated on the wood grain of the dining room table. 

“I guess. I see myself as a sort of third party most of the time. Usually I’m pretty good about keeping emotional investments out of my decision making process, because it isn’t very easy for me to bring myself to make emotional connections. I don’t know if it’s like that for everyone, but that’s the way it is for me.” He narrowed his silver eyes and set his jaw before softening his features and turning to me. “Eren, I have a question, but you have to promise me you’ll never say anything about it ever again.”

“Go ahead,” I said, nodding my head and reaching over to gently touch his arm. 

“You sure? I don’t want you to think that I’d ever hurt you,” Levi responded, a thick fog settling over his eyes, shrouding his thoughts from my view.

“If you want to say something to me, don’t ever be afraid of how I’ll respond. Just say it. I promise, there is very little that you could say that would disturb me.”

“Okay,” he said, letting out another long sigh. “Okay,” he repeated, seemingly trying to coax himself into speaking. “Have you ever wished that somebody would die? Even if that person didn’t necessarily deserve it?”

I paused for a moment, reminding myself that this was exactly what I had signed up for. “Is this about Zeke?” I asked, but Levi shook his head.

“Well, not really, but I guess he would be on the list,” Levi scoffed. “But, no, I mean generally.”

“I think that most people have dark thoughts sometimes, but what really makes you or breaks you is whether or not you act on those thoughts,” I said, doing my best at counseling the poor boy. “And I think I’d know if you acted on them,” I added with a soft chuckle, trying to lighten his mood a little. 

“Well, I don’t know if I’d tell you if I did, but I’m sure you’d find out sooner or later,” he said, and it was then that I realized he might have been hinting at something. “I’m just saying that sometimes my thoughts are very loud, and there is a dwindling amount of things I can do to prevent myself from acting on them.”

“If you did hurt somebody else, would you have already done it?” I asked, but Levi quickly shook his head.

“Oh, no. I’d wanna wait it out, and go for it when the timing was right,” he said, and I wasn’t sure what to make of that, and so asked him more directly. “I’d take my time and make them wish they’d never been born.” His words sent a shiver running down my spine, and I was reminded of what my job was.

“Have you hurt somebody, Levi? Or are you planning to?” I asked, trying not to scare him back into silence, as I still needed to get information.

“No. I haven’t hurt anybody, and I’m not planning to at the moment, either, but if Zeke tries something again, we’ll have to see what comes of it.”

I trusted his word, as he’d been nearly perfectly transparent with me every other time I asked him something, and he sat with an open posture, which helped his case. “If you ever think you want to do something like that, just remind yourself that the jail time isn’t worth it.” 

“That’s only if I got caught,” Levi smirked before continuing his point, using his pizza to gesture in lieu of his hands. “I dunno. I guess I just feel like nobody focuses on protecting the vulnerable people. Not even good people. I wouldn’t say I’m good people, but I don’t think it’s fair that people like Petra are consistently exploited by bigger, stronger people like Zeke, and if I need to resort to violence to knock those kinds of people back a little bit, I don’t have a problem with that.”

“So, you’re more of a vigilante, then,” I laughed, hoping to keep the energy in the conversation on a more positive side, not wanting him to feel like there was anything inherently wrong with what he was saying, because inherently, there wasn’t. Wanting to use brute force and violence to protect others wasn’t evil, or twisted. If anything, it was noble. 

“If you want to call it that,” Levi scoffed, folding his arms and shaking his head at me. “I like the idea of making oppressors suffer. I don’t even like the idea of killing them that much. I just want to see them hurt. Bad,” Levi said blankly, like he was lost in a gruesome train of thought. “I want to watch them beg for their lives, and if they die during the process, so be it, that’s just some extra gratification for the road.”

“That’s fair,” I replied, knowing that that was not, in fact, fair in the eyes of the law, but willing to concede as he had mostly noble intentions. “You’ve had to suck up to abusive people your entire life.”

“I wasn’t abused, Eren,” Levi said firmly, suddenly stricken by a defensive glower directed at me.

“Then what would you call it? You live in a boxcar for fuck’s sake, Levi. Your mother has no idea where you are right now, and-”

“I wasn’t abused,” Levi repeated, his words biting me while he shook his head. “Wanna know what I’d call that? A mom that can’t handle her own life and shouldn't have had kids in the first place. She can’t fuckin’ help herself. Doesn’t mean she’s a bad person, but she has no idea how to be a parent. Not a fuckin’ clue.”

“Well, neglect is a form of abuse,” I tried to say, but I knew that I would have to back off some, as I could see how uncomfortable he was, but I had to drive my stance home before I was willing to give him a breather. “You don’t deserve to be neglected just because your mother didn’t know how to parent you. Even unprepared parents should do their best to take care of their kids. Your mom’s little stunt? Kicking you out to fend for yourself? That’s abusive. You didn’t deserve that, and even if she was as unprepared to be a parent as the moss on a rock, she still should have sucked it up and taken care of you. That’s what parents are supposed to do, Levi.”

Levi didn’t say anything after that, but he nodded to let me know he’d heard me. We finished our pizza in tense silence, and I knew I’d pushed him just a little too far. I knew that an apology on my part would at least partially smooth things over, so once we had finished our belated breakfast, I spoke up again.

“Hey, man, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone there,” I said, looking down at him while we bounced around the kitchen, cleaning up our plates and then pulling two bottles of soda from the four pack in the fridge. 

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t like you had any bad intentions,” Levi replied, his voice a soft murmur that mixed with the sound of fizzing carbonation from the Cokes. 

“Yeah, but I still should have stopped pushing when you set that boundary. I knew better, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said, trying to use this opportunity to set a healthy precedent for our future conversations. 

“It’s okay, Eren. I’m fine,” Levi said, louder than before, but still in a voice that was hardly past a whisper. He was clearly in deep contemplation while he stared off into space, but he brought himself back and said, “So, do you wanna watch a movie or something?”

“Sure, let’s see what’s on,” I said, happy to see that he was trying to regulate himself without my intervention. 

“That’s a plan,” he said, taking a seat on the couch and watching me while I fiddled with the television. It looked like some sort of horror special had just started, and so I left it where it was tuned on the knob, now just fiddling with the antennae to make sure we got the clearest picture possible. I returned to the couch beside Levi, feeling giddy butterflies bubbling up inside of me when he put his arm around me and pulled me close to him. “So what’s this?”

“I dunno. I’ve never seen it before,” I replied. “Some scary movie.”

Levi scrutinized the television closer before gasping and looking at me. “What channel is this? I thought this movie got banned.”

“I dunno. It’s whatever channel that it was on before the TV got turned off last time,” I said, shrugging my shoulders and looking at him. “Why’d it get banned?” I asked. 

“Cuz it’s pretty brutal. I mean, it’s Wes Craven,” he said while four people dragged two young girls from the trunk of their car and into the woods. I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach for the fictional girls, knowing that there wasn’t exactly anything good that could come from that. “See?” he gestured towards the violence that was ensuing as a result of one of the girls trying to escape. 

“Oh shit, should I change the channel?” I asked, but Levi shook his head.

“No, it has a really cool ending, if Oluo wasn’t just blowing smoke up my ass,” Levi replied.

“Okay, then I guess we can watch it, if you promise not to let it fuck with you,” I said, smiling while Levi squeezed my shoulder.

“I’ll be alright. But if you’re too chicken,” he trailed off, wiggling his eyebrows at me while he gestured towards the television. “Be my guest.”

“Ha-ha, very funny,” I droned sardonically, reaching across his body and flicking his shoulder.

“You’re right, I’m a fucking comedian,” Levi scoffed, pressing a kiss to the side of my head while I brought my feet up onto the couch and stretched my legs out to span the rest of the unused space. I had to look away towards the end of the forest scene, and I began to understand why the movie was banned in the first place. 

“This is a bit much,” I said, shocked by how graphic and realistic the violence was, rather uncomfortable with what I was witnessing.

“Just wait. Don’t worry. The parents aren’t gonna let it slide,” Levi assured me, petting my hair while I stretched out further and rested my head in his lap. 

“Okay. I’ll take your word for it,” I replied. 

“Well, you’re not exactly taking my word for it, you’re more taking Ollie’s, but I guess we’ll just have to trust him,” Levi snorted, continuing to absentmindedly brush his fingers through my hair while he focused on the movie. “I love a good vengeance arc, though.”

“Well, it had better make up for what I just had to witness,” I muttered, settling in and quieting down as the plot progressed. I was half asleep when Levi caught my attention with a start. 

“Holy fuck!” Levi exhaled, and when I opened my eyes I cringed as it became clear that one of the antagonists had just had his genitals bitten off by the mother of the murdered girl. “Did you see that? She just bit his fucking dick off. That’s fucking cold.”

“Jesus Chist. Wouldn’t want it to be me,” I huffed, still feeling internal pain as my mind processed what had just occurred. 

“No kidding,” Levi laughed, shaking his head at the screen. 

“That hurt to watch,” I said, sitting up again and getting comfortable in my new position. 

“Well, he got what was coming to him. Don’t fuck with people’s kids,” Levi shrugged nonchalantly. 

“Have you ever thought about kids before?” I asked him, not that I had, but wondering if he had some sort of defined opinion.

“I have,” he said evasively.

“And?” I questioned.

“Have  _ you _ thought about having kids, Eren?” 

“I asked you first,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too snarky when I replied.

“I don’t want any kids,” he said softly. “I feel like I’m supposed to want them, but I just don’t think that’d be a very good idea.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well, because I’d probably end up a lot like the parents in this movie. Something bad would happen, and I’d have to kill the bastard that hurt my kid.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” I said, but was quick to assure him afterwards. “But I think that it’s more noble than scary. Unless, of course, you’re in the child-harming-business.”

“I hope you’re right with that one,” he murmured, looking at me through heavy lashes while his fingertips frequented my knee, squeezing the familiar ticklish nerves on my leg, I began to feel a rather unfamiliar warmth behind his touch. When his hands started moving back to his own lap, I intercepted them, keeping Levi’s hand on my leg, resting close to my knee. I could practically feel my own heartbeat while I held Levi’s hand on my leg, waiting for one of us to do something. Levi’s knowing eyes flicked to mine before he asked, “Do, uh… do you want me to kiss you?” he asked timidly.

“Do you want to kiss me?” I questioned back, waiting to hear from him before I did anything.

“Fuck,” he whispered, reaching and squeezing further up my thigh. “Yes,” he said under his breath. 

“Do it, then,” I said, leaning in so that my words just barely ghosted his, letting in a sharp breath when he pressed me back into the arm of the couch. He wrapped his arms around my waist, catching my fall while his lips fell into mine. I let out a quiet sound when his hips began to flatten against mine, and bent my knees to give myself some space in case things began to escalate too far. 

“Eren, keep kissing me,” Levi exhaled against my lips, letting his hips fall heavily against mine, our asynchronous movements creating an all-consuming friction between our bodies. I felt him move his lips from my mouth to my neck, using soft, biting kisses on the column of my throat. I made a strange, gasp-like noise as a result of the sheer arousal Levi’s stimulus was giving me. Gone were any recollections of the movie we were watching, all I could think about was the way his lips sealed off his gentle bites. “God, I love how it feels to kiss you.”

“It’s so good,” I nodded in response, relishing in the neurons firing off in my brain to keep me so ecstatic. “Keep going.”

“Eren, what do you want me to do?” He asked into the corner of my jaw, slowly rocking his hips into mine. I could feel heat beginning to pool at the pit of my stomach when I pressed my hips back into his. “If I keep going, you just have to know that I’m starting to get hard.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, gasping while he rutted his hips down into mine. He gripped onto my shoulders and all I could think about was the feeling of the growing hard on in Levi’s pants rubbing up against mine. Even when his movements paused, the weight in his hips made my stomach flush. “Just,” I breathed, reaching down and taking hold of his hips, “Just pin me here like that for a second,” I whispered, using my grip on his hips to hold him still against mine. “Even when you hold still, it feels fucking good.”

“Jesus Christ,” Levi exhaled against my neck while I nodded beneath him, using my legs to keep his hips securely pressed against mine. I didn’t want to move too much, because I wasn’t sure where I wanted this to go, and didn’t want him to hurt too badly in case we decided that we couldn’t go much further.

“Yeah, just like that,” I whispered, doing my best not to move while he steadily pushed his hips into mine, just barely rocking his hips against me, almost like he was doing it unintentionally. I couldn’t help but meet him halfway with my hips while he was fucking me into the couch to the best of his ability in our fully clothed states, and the guise of immobility was lost. 

His hips pushed searing heat into my bloodstream, while I began to move my hips against his as well and I was trying my hardest not to completely lose my mind with how good it felt. “Keep grinding on me,” I whispered, dragging my fingers through his hair while he began to move his hips on mine with a little bit more purpose. I let out a quiet moan that he caught the tail end of in a rushed, feral kiss. 

He captured my lips in his while I arched my back a little, needing to feel every movement of his hips while they rubbed against mine. His grip loosened on my hips and moved towards my inner thighs, rubbing his thumbs across the sensitive nerves there. I moaned and pushed my hips up into his, arching my back against the couch. As he began to kiss me harder once again, he began to pick up the pace of the movement of our hips together, practically rubbing me off through his flannel pyjama bottoms. 

“Eren, can I touch you?” Levi asked, groping half-blindly at my thighs. I was so thrown off by the sensations that I could only nod at him until we registered that there was a knock at the front door and abruptly flew away from each other.

“Eren?” we heard Petra’s voice call out. “Are you home?” 

My heart was pounding in my chest at the fear of being discovered, and as I scrambled to open the door, a resounding, “Just a second,” escaped my lips. I actively tried to calm myself down, but the tent in my shorts was even more obvious when I stood up. “Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered to myself, looking for something to cover my crotch with. 

“Called that one,” Levi scoffed at me. Finally, I found a large sweater and pulled it over my head, tugging it down so that the fabric rested over everything that needed concealing before I opened the door and admitted Petra into my house. 


	34. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tbh I'm afraid to post this chapter.... Don't hate me plzzzz<3 And just to clarify, I don't condone adults banging minors irl. Eren's got some underlying issues. Don't take this as what the norm should be. Yadda Yadda, you don't wanna hear from me, I'm getting off the soapbox. Enjoy the chapter.

“You guys are alive! That’s good to see,” Petra chirped jovially as soon as she was through the front door. She wore her hair in a long ponytail and hanging just past her knees was a loose emerald colored tank-top dress that looked as though she had dyed the fabric herself. Over her shoulders, however, was her signature leather Harley Davidson jacket, throwing off the ‘flower child’ look just a little bit. “You didn’t come to school today.”

“Mhm,” Levi nodded coldly, crossing his legs when Petra approached him on the couch.

“Lemme get a look at that shiner,” Petra said, completely ignoring the subject of the wound dressing on her forearm until Levi brought it up. 

“How bad did Zeke get you with that cigarette?” I asked while Petra took Levi’s face in her hands, looking him over closely before pulling away and answering me.

“Well, it’ll probably scar, but I guess that’s not the worst thing I’ve ever heard of. I’ll live,” she snorted in conclusion.

“I shoulda hit him harder then,” Levi muttered, shaking his head at himself while he tugged at his pants, trying to make them looser, but not much was working on that front.

“No. None of this,” Petra snapped, swatting Levi’s shoulder while his eyes met mine with a longing that at that moment, I definitely understood. “I can’t have you guys getting hurt for me.”

“We’d rather take a little bit of a beating than have you getting knocked around though, Petra,” I explained, fussing with the hem of my sweatshirt, trying to pull the bottom of it as far down as I possibly could in an attempt to completely conceal my crotch while I sat down. Levi and I were still more than a little hot and bothered and the heat in each other’s eyes seemed to portray that well. 

“I second that,” Levi agreed, nodding slowly while his jaw clenched and unclenched itself. 

“So, what were you guys up to?” Petra asked, sitting on the couch beside Levi while I took the spot up against the arm. 

“Uh, we were watching this movie,” Levi said, his cheeks adopting a rosy hue while he gestured towards the television, though the credits were rolling now, and I couldn’t quite remember the title of the movie.

“What movie?” she asked, and both of us shrugged.

“We weren’t really paying attention, we were having a conversation,” I stepped in smoothly. 

“About what?” she asked, and again I was at a loss for words, as I hadn’t quite thought that far yet. I couldn’t just tell her we had been making out on the couch the three of us were now seated on. I pulled the throw that had been draped over the back of the couch down across my lap, now sitting cross legged beneath the blanket.

“Um, well, about the pizza we had for dinner last night,” Levi replied awkwardly, and I hoped he hadn’t just blown our cover. “It was really good.”

“Yeah, that’s what it was. Pepperoni is my favorite,” I added, nodding quickly, trying to get her to move on. 

“Boys are weird,” Petra chortled to herself at our responses. “Do you have any other words of enlightenment, or is pizza all that there is today?”

“Aw, come on, man, it isn’t like we’re on top of our game right now,” Levi scoffed, shaking his head at his friend while he slowly rubbed his thighs together, not so swiftly that it would look suspicious to Petra, but it was more than easy enough for me to tell what he was doing. He was trying to hold off the intense discomfort he would feel if he stopped stimulating himself, the discomfort that was already starting to settle in between my hips.

“That’s true,” I agreed quickly, taking the remote and beginning to flip through channels in an attempt to distract Petra. “What do you feel like watching?” I asked, and Petra was quick to respond with a suggestion.

“Wanna watch _ MASH _ ? I think it’s on soon,” Petra recommended, and I nodded, leafing through channels until she said, “It’s on CBS. I think that’s channel 34.”

“ _ MASH  _ works,” I nodded, tuning in to the appropriate channel and tossing the blanket over Levi’s lap as well when Petra leaned forward to stare at the TV. I checked the clock, as the sun was nearly set behind the mountains to the west, sinking beneath a thick blanket of heavy storm clouds. 6:13 it read unapologetically. 

“Are your aunt and uncle here, Eren?” Petra asked, turning to me and looking me in the eyes.

“No,” I replied, shaking my head at her to emphasize my point. 

“Okay, cool,” she said, undoing her ponytail and smiling at us while she shook out her hair. “I left my weed in the car, but I can go get it for you guys. I could use a little bit of a smoking session.”

“That’s a great idea,” Levi responded, pulling the thick throw blanket further over the two of us while Petra stood to go get her marijuana from her car. As soon as she was out the front door, I felt a hand on my crotch, feeling me up. Closing my eyes, overcome by the sudden pleasure Levi’s palming was giving me, I couldn’t help the gasping moan that escaped my lips. “Shh,” Levi hissed, using his hand to palm my dick inconspicuously beneath the blanket. “If you want me to keep touching you,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to my jaw before stating his terms, “you gotta be quiet. Don’t let Petra catch on, okay?”

“Okay,” I nodded, furrowing my brow while Levi’s hand continued to gently squeeze up the bulge in my shorts. “ _ Fuck _ ,” I whined right as Petra opened the front door again, waving the bag of weed in our direction.

“What was that?” Petra asked when she sat back down on the couch. 

“Oh, nothing,” I said, trying to keep an even tone in my voice. “I was just yawning.”

“Okay, cool,” Petra said, while Levi let out a quiet snort through his nose and continued to touch me over my shorts, slowly working his hand lower and tracing his fingers up the underside of my cock. I felt butterflies flitting about my insides and my chest tightened as I tried to keep my breathing even, and the slack-jawed, totally blissed expression away while it battled its way onto my face. “Have you ever seen _ MASH _ before?” she asked me, and I shook my head.

“Well, you’ll catch on,” she said, smiling and nudging my shoulder before pulling a small pipe from the pocket of her jacket and beginning to place pinch-fuls of the potent green plant into the bowl. 

“For sure,” I nodded, pressing my teeth into my bottom lip and reaching for a decorative brown pillow that was pressed between my back and the couch. I gripped onto it and dug my nails into the fabric, trying to grip tightly enough that I could focus on that and keep a normal looking expression on my face. All of my composure was hanging by a thread as it was, and so it was no help when Petra took a hit of the pipe and passed it to me. I took it in my hands and shot Levi a glance, questioning whether or not he would stop touching me long enough that I could get a hit without my shaking hands spilling it all over the couch. 

His response came as a simple shake of his head, so slight I barely even saw it, but I knew it was intentional, because he stared me right in the eyes while he did it. I lit the bowl and took as deep of an inhale as I could manage silently, and held the breath of smoke in my lungs while I passed the pipe to Levi, who was beginning to tug on the elastic band that held my shorts in place. I felt his fingertips slide their way down the space between my hip bones and I lost my breath, coughing and sputtering while Levi took his hit.

Although I hadn’t held my breath for a long time, the THC in the smoke had done its job, and I could already feel my head growing heavier, and so, releasing the pillow I laced my fingers behind my head and tipped my head back against the back of the couch. 

“You know what’s beautiful?” Levi asked in a low, strained voice while he wrapped his fingers around my dick. His pupils were blown wide and I watched as his tongue swiped across his lips.

“What?” Petra asked, looking at Levi for a moment after he’d asked his question.

“That  _ sunset _ , holy cow,” he said, turning towards the window in the living room for the first time that day. I pressed my lips into a thin line while Petra leaned over me to look out the window. “I could just,” he trailed off with a hum, turning back to look at me. As I looked out the window, I saw no sunlight whatsoever, but in the glow of the distant streetlight, I could see rain coming down outside. I looked and saw panic flash in his eyes as he registered the looming darkness outside. It was then that I understood that this had nothing to do with the sunset and the blush on my face must have been priceless because Levi gave me a sharp guffaw when he looked my direction and saw it.

“What sunset?” Petra asked, shaking her head at Levi. “The sun’s already gone down.”

“Well, it was pretty when it did,” Levi shrugged, briefly tugging on my cock in the front of my shorts before going back to teasing me over my pants, nearly causing me to swat at the smug look on his face. He began groping at the inside of my thighs before he spoke again. “Did you know the sun is an almost perfect sphere?” he said, squeezing my thigh. The way he touched me, though, it wasn’t rough. There wasn’t any chafing against his palms, he was much more tactful than that. It wasn’t that he was gripping or pinching, rather he was rolling my flesh in his palms, kneading my thigh in his fingers, making sure to spread heat through my body with every movement of his palm. I wanted so badly to be able to touch him, to wrap my legs around his hips and feel him rut them up against me, but we were already doing enough unacceptable things, that I knew I shouldn’t be adding to the list. 

“Oh fuck- really?” I said, nearly blowing our cover, but quickly amending myself mid-stride. I could feel him nervously falter on my thigh while I stumbled over my words for a moment. I was drowning in the desire to take him upstairs with me, but I tried to hold myself off to the best of my ability.

“How high are you right now, Levi? Did you two smoke before I came over?” Petra asked, but Levi shook his head, denying her presumptions outright. A bold move considering he had his hand up the leg of my shorts. 

“No, ma’am,” he said, a small, contented smile playing on his lips. “I’m just high on life.”

“ _ Aw,  _ that’s a beautiful sentiment,” Petra replied sarcastically, smiling back with a goofy, ear to ear grin, completely oblivious to what was going on on the other side of the couch from her. If all went well, she would stay oblivious. 

“Hm,” Levi confirmed, nodding his head and turning his face back to the television while I contemplated how to get subtle revenge on him for his cocky sun tangent. I reached to turn up the volume, to discourage further conversation while I contemplated my options. I decided that it wasn’t fair that I wasn’t compensating him in some way for the way he was making me feel, and so, after making sure that Petra’s eyes were on the television, I slid my hand beneath the blanket and felt my way over to Levi’s leg. I heard him inhale quietly while I pressed my fingers into the inseam of his pants. His eyes flicked over to mine and he whispered beneath his breath, “You don’t have to if you don’t want.”

“Do you want me to?” I asked nearly inaudibly, snaking my fingers further up his thigh, smirking when his hand faltered and desperately shifted to my cock. Closing my eyes for a second, I fought the urge to grind myself up into his hand, as such an abrupt movement could catch Petra’s eye. When I opened my eyes, Levi nodded, muffling a very quiet moan behind his lips while his free hand guided mine to the hard bulge in his pants. When my hand grasped it, I watched his eyelids flutter in response to the shudder that surged through his whole body. Slowly, I began to squeeze him through his pants, before reaching over and rubbing my thumb over the tip. I watched the toes on his bare feet curl when I did that, and heard suppressed moans sound out from behind his lips

The ringing of the telephone was another abrupt shock to my system as I jolted away from Levi. In my heated haze, I had completely forgotten the next course of action after the phone rings. Levi and Petra both looked at me for a moment, and I remembered that it was my house, and therefore my job to answer the phone. After making sure everything below the belt was covered, I stood up and rushed to the phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen, putting a set of counters and ceiling mounted cabinets between me and the lowered living room. 

“Hello?” I asked into the receiver, wondering who other than Petra would want to call my house after dark. I was stoned and well past horny, so I had low hopes for any kind of conversation with whoever called.

“Eren?” Oluo’s voice came from the other line. I was suddenly less surprised, but I knew I’d have to pass on any kind of social call, given the nearly panting state I was in. “Petra gave me your number and said she would be there. Are the three of you at your place?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah, it’s me, Petra, and Levi,” I affirmed slowly, taking the time to enunciate my words, and nodding while I twisted the telephone cord around my finger, pumping my index finger through the stretching coiled wire and staring past Petra at Levi. He was in rough shape, with one of his hands under the blanket, but the way his arm was bent told me it was likely resting on one of his own legs, if not further up. His other hand was thrown over his face, gracile, alabaster fingers splayed across the deep purple bruises marring his eye socket and cheekbone. I could only gulp when I saw the shape of his hand slowly gliding over the space between his legs. Truth be told, I nearly lost my balance, and I certainly forgot I was on the phone for a moment.

“Marco wants to hang out, and you’re all invited,” Ollie said while I continued to toy with the curled cord, watching Levi squirm in my peripherals while I turned towards the stove. I could feel the ache in my body that came with a lack of physical attention in the state I was in, and as hormonal as most teenagers are, it was easy to understand why Levi was reacting so strongly to the drawn out foreplay.

“Alright, I’ll see who wants to go,” I said, wondering if there was any way I could swing it so that Petra went and Levi and I stayed where we were. Turning to the other two again, taking note of the beads of sweat in Levi’s hairline, I asked the question, “Marco wants to meet up. Who’s in?” 

“I’ll go,” Petra said, immediately making things easier for me. “Seems like you guys are doing alright. I can give you a ride if you wanna come, though.”

“I would go,” Levi spoke up, crossing his legs and trying to compose himself. “But I’m not sure about a bunch of people right now. I’m already trying to ignore the migraine I’ve got, but if there’s lots of people, I don’t know how well I’d do.” I let out a sigh of relief as Levi practically read my mind.

“Well, I can stay back to make sure you have what you need. You have fun, Petra,” I nodded before speaking to Ollie again, leaning over the kitchen counter and facing the other two while I answered the boy on the phone. “Petra’s coming, but I gotta play nurse for Levi. Where are you meeting?”

“Just Marco’s place. Right now,” Ollie said while I pushed my hips against the laminate countertop, begging for some kind of release for the barbed wire wrapped around the inside of my lower abdomen. I was glad the kitchen was dark, because the muscles in my face spoke volumes about how good the bit of purchase against the counter felt, but I tried my best to maintain a level voice.

“Just go to Marco’s alright, Petra? The other guys will meet you there,” I informed the redhead who was still sitting on the couch. 

“Cool beans. See you at school tomorrow?” she asked, and I nodded.

  
“We’ll be there,” I replied to her, waving at her while she gathered her things and made her way for the door, but stopped when she turned on her heel and marched up to me from the side while I leaned over the counter, pretending to have a normal amount of interest in the normal conversation. I froze for a second, wondering what she was about to do, when she wrapped her arms around my lowered shoulders and pulled me in for a hug. I was lucky I hadn’t been standing upright, or she would have seen the very obvious tent in my pants.

“Thanks for taking care of Levi,” she whispered, giving me a single pat on the back and pulling away and walking out the door before I could say a word.

“Well, she just left my place, so you’ll see her pretty soon, alright?” I said, not willing to do mental math to give him a better estimate. 

“Sounds good to me,” Ollie said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “Catch ya on the flipside, Ace.” I hung up the phone once I heard the dial tone and started towards Levi, who had stood from the couch and begun making his way over to me. Once we reached each other, I was a little stunned by the force Levi used to pin me against the wall, his lips immediately engulfing mine while hands gripped and pawed at my waist, riding my shirt up a little and exposing the hard on in my pants. 

Levi made haste as soon as he felt it, though, driving his knee between my legs and pinning me to the wall behind us. His kisses only got better and better when he started sliding the top of his thigh against my crotch. At the feeling of nearly his entire body simultaneously giving me pleasure, high sounding hums trickled into Levi’s lips, and were swallowed by the soft, nearly paradisiacal sounds he gave me in return. Each kiss he pressed into me felt like a promise from him, but I had no idea what it was that he was promising.

“Oh my fucking God,” Levi growled against my parted lips, his voice hoarse as it spread across my skin in cool waves of sudden goosebumps. He held my face in his hands and paused for a moment, pressing our foreheads together and staring into my eyes. Once he had mostly caught his breath he said, “You have the most beautiful eyes. I can’t tell if they’re green or blue.”

“You said that yesterday,” I chuckled against his lips.

“Well I never got to finish that sentiment,” Levi said, pressing his lips to the side of my jaw. “I was going to follow it up with, “I’ll have to look at you longer to figure it out.””

“Well, so much for looking at my eyes,” I scoffed, though that devolved into wanton gasps for air when he slipped a cold hand up my shirt and ran the smooth pad of his thumb across one of my nipples.

“Tell me about mine then,” he whispered, grazing his teeth over the burning skin on the column of my throat. 

“Yours remind me of ice,” I responded, taking a break from speaking to draw Levi’s chin up and plant another kiss on his lips before rolling back so that our foreheads were touching. “And I think that’s hot.”

“You think the ice is hot?” Levi tried to laugh, shaking his head incredulously against mine while his wandering hands found their way back to my waist. “You’re delusional.”

“Really?” I asked, mildly distracted by the feeling of his leg rutting up against my crotch, but willing to participate in the banter.

“Eren, I have a question,” Levi said, his face softening while he placed a kiss on my nose.

“Go ahead,” I replied, so engrossed in his existence, coupled with the anticipation I was feeling about this being the first physical attention we’d given each other since we had confessed our feelings.

“Will you kiss me again?” he asked, and I nodded at him, immediately meeting our lips again, and relishing in pleasure that was being rained upon me, even harder than the storm outside. The dark clouds had turned into a full fledged thunderstorm in the span of only a couple hours, but that was the way of the desert, and I’d stopped being surprised.

“Let’s take this upstairs,” I gasped, wondering when I’d become so fickle in terms of morals, but Levi didn’t seem to mind while he pressed another kiss to my lips. 

“That’s funny that you’d assume we’ll even make it that far,” Levi snorted in response, taking my hand and wrapping his lips around the tip of my index finger. I shivered when I felt his teeth gently bite down on the pad of my finger. I could feel the visuals of that simple act sinking into my skin while I watched him.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, grinning at him while he continued to play with my finger between his lips. 

“I- I don’t actually know. You know more about this kind of thing than I do,” Levi said, finally giving me my finger back, though I assumed he did know what he wanted and was just being coy about it, and so I asked him directly.

“Well, sure,  _ with girls _ . Last time I checked, you’re not a girl, and so, as somebody that is as inexperienced with men as you, I’m asking you what you want me to do for you. Do you want me to put it in my mouth for you, Levi?” I asked, nearly blind with the intense arousal I was experiencing, especially after keeping all of it pent up for the most part while Petra was there. “Would you like that?”

Levi nodded his head, and with that I took him by the shoulders and pushed him backwards up the stairs and into my bedroom. When I released him, I turned around and closed the door, turning the lock in case anybody else dropped by. With my back turned to him, Levi came up behind me and slipped his hand down the front of my pants. “What’s stopping you, Eren?” he asked, confusing me by his sudden, unrelated question.

“What do you mean?” I asked, a little bewildered, but enjoying the feeling of his erection grinding against my ass, and his hand palming my crotch. “I’m about to suck your dick. There’s nothing stopping me.”

“No, I know. But you always seem so hesitant when we get each other off, and I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind waiting if you really want to, but I just notice that you seem to be holding yourself back. Are you- hah- afraid you’re not gonna like it?”

His question cut me deep, and made me realize that because Levi was normally the one to take initiative in our relationship, he must have felt like he was forcing me into things I didn’t want to be a part of, which was not the case at all. “No, Levi, I’m not afraid of that. If it’s anything like what we’ve done before, I have no doubt that I’ll enjoy it. I just don’t want you to make a choice you’ll regret in the future,” I answered him as honestly as I could, given that I couldn’t blow my cover. I knew that it wasn’t just about me and what I wanted, because if it had been, I’d have slept with him far before then. “I want you to make the choice you want to make, and, man to man, I don’t want to just be a mistake you made in high school. I love you, and I want you to make the choice when you want to make it.”

“Then, Eren, I want  _ you _ tonight. I wanna go all the way,” he murmured into the side of my neck, and I nodded, afraid that was what he’d say. I would have told him we had to wait it out, but I had lost my mind somewhere between the weed and the hanjob and I wasn’t sure if or when it’d be back.

“Okay,” I said, nodding my head and taking a deep breath, finally letting the pendulum in my mind fall and hit the floor. “I can do that.” After I spoke those words, I pulled Levi’s hand from my pants and turned around, pressing a kiss to his lips and pushing him backwards onto the bed. He sat and stared at me with wide eyes while I tried to recall every porno I’d ever seen, scanning my memories for  _ any _ more than welcome advice on the particular situation I was in. 

“So, uh, can I be the, erm, the  _ giver _ ?” Levi asked, eyeing me for a moment, gauging my response. “I wanna know what it’s like.”

“Sure, that’s called topping, I’m pretty sure,” I nodded, willing to give him practically whatever he wanted. Climbing onto his lap and wrapping my legs around his hips, I began to pray for forgiveness to whatever god would listen. I knew that what I was about to do was wrong, but I couldn’t bring myself to give a damn. “That part’s pretty easy to figure out, or at least it was my first time,” I tried to assure him. I, myself, had no opinion on whether I preferred to be on the giving or the receiving end, as I was sure that regardless, I would finish out satisfied.

Levi stole a quick kiss from my lips before pulling back and letting me instruct him. Thinking for a moment, I decided that the best course of action would be if he laid on his back and let me do the work for at least part of the time. I saw the faint glow of the moon illuminating the dark bedroom through the thick black clouds, and water droplets on the glass raced towards the bottom of the glass, somehow reminding me through my marijuana fog to stay on task. “Okay, I think I have a pretty good idea of what we’re supposed to do.”

“You’ll tell me if I hurt you, right?” Levi asked, his eyes wide with a sudden concern. I looked at him and nodded, feeling a warmth fizzle up in my chest at the uncharacteristically empathetic expression that was written across his face.

“I promise,” I said, smiling quickly to reassure him before pulling him in for another, much longer, more drawn out kiss. Feeling the way his lips melded against mine, our tongues pushed in and out of each other’s mouths, exploring deeper with each accelerating movement of our bodies. I had had a hard on for far too long, and it really was starting to hurt, so I could only imagine how Levi felt, having gotten far less attention than he’d given me. “I’ll make you feel so good, Levi.”

The moan I heard dragging from Levi’s lips was a more than perfect response, and so I quickly reached down to untie the drawstring in the pyjama pants Levi had on. Undoing the bow, I slipped my hand down the front of his pants and teased the head of his cock with the slightest touches of my fingertips, causing him to spill over with body-wracking chills while his hips slowly started dry humping me again, which was something I didn’t think he was even aware of at the point we were at. His body was pleading with him for a release, and the blatant need was written all over his face while his instincts started to take hold of him. I decided it was time for me to revoke the shirt I’d given him, tugging the soft cotton over his head and throwing it onto the ground. 

“Turn on the lights,” Levi breathed while his hands roamed underneath my sweater and my shirt, fingers drumming against my waist while I pushed him onto his back. “I wanna see everything you do.” His words melted on my skin while his hands reached up my shirt and his thumbs started rubbing circles over the firm, sensitive buds of my nipples, shooting me with more searing pleasure

I did as I was asked, and flicked on the lamp on the bedside table, squinting while my eyes adjusted to the sudden light. “That good?”

With eyes that were wide as they scanned the length of my body, Levi nodded. “Perfect,” he murmured, pulling my sweater over my head, and then my shirt, tossing both articles of clothing onto the ground before leaning up to drag his lips across my collarbones, biting and sucking on the skin while I let out small sounds I didn’t even think I could make. “So perfect, Eren, God. You’re so perfect. You’re the only person I could ever make love to.”

Any words on my lips were lost while automatically I pinned him to the bed with another kiss, overcome by a toxic mix of being a fool in love and feeling like a dog in heat. “Make love to me then,” I whispered between the heavy kisses I was landing on his desperately trembling lips.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Levi muttered, looking me over once more, and I watched the shadows cast by the single lamp dance across his face while I lifted myself off of him.

“Start with your fingers,” I whispered into his ear before I took his pierced earlobe between my teeth, tugging on it for a moment and letting go while he held still beneath me.

“You’re the boss,” Levi smirked, while I stood over him on all fours, closing my eyes and taking his lips with another frenzied kiss, both of us losing our grips on reality and falling covertly into the safety of a rainy evening. I felt him gripping at my ass over my shorts, squeezing his way up to the elastic waistband, which he tugged down to my knees, pausing and giving me a minute to get them the rest of the way off. 

When our lips briefly pulled apart, Levi’s eyes widened at my exposed lower half, and I watched his Adam's apple bob in his throat while he stared at it. “Jesus, wow, Eren,” he said, almost immediately reaching between my legs and taking hold of my cock. “It’s dripping.” His eyes watched my face while he gingerly pumped my exposed shaft, watching the effect it had on my body with every methodical stroke. “Oh, God, that’s so hot,” Levi breathed, taking a moment to absorb the strong influence he’d had on me over the course of the evening, and it occurred to me that that was the first time either of us had seen each other completely naked. I was more than a little excited to see what Levi had shielded beneath his clothing. 

“If you’ve ever been worried about how you make me feel, I hope that clears things up for you. That was all you, Levi,” I said, lowering my hips onto his again, so that I was straddling him again. I leaned up and buried my face into the crook of his neck, finally biting into that tattoo of his, just exactly the way I’d imagined doing it so many times before. 

“Ah!” he cried out when I sucked the skin further into my mouth, tasting the sweat on his skin and secretly hoping I would bruise him there. “Eren,” he gasped: music to my ears. Arching his back and pushing his hips up into mine, his vocal chords shot wanton renditions of my own name over and over again into my ears, injecting me with his own pleasure like it was some kind of drug. 

“Put your fingers in me right now,” I nearly begged him, the words tumbling out of my lips before I could stop them. He chuckled at me while his hands continued to knead the globes of my ass, but I was growing desperate. “Please, I need it so bad,” I actually begged him, only seconds later, unable to morally justify the words coming out of my mouth.

Levi nodded, lifting his fingers to my mouth so that I could wet them for him. Taking them into my mouth, I maintained eye contact with Levi the entire time I flicked my tongue between each finger. Once they were each coated in enough of my saliva, Levi pulled them out of my swollen lips with a resounding pop. I gasped when he reached down and began to prod at the rim with his first finger. 

I gasped and felt my muscles tighten around his fingertip when he began to push it into me. “It’s okay, Eren. Relax. Nobody’s here. We have nowhere to be. It’s just you and me right now. Nobody else exists,” he assured me, reaching up and petting the top of my head with his free hand. I could feel him slide the first finger in to the first little knuckle, just past his fingertip, and I could feel my breath quicken in response to the stimulus, but I forced my body to relax so Levi could slip the rest of his finger in. In one smooth movement, I felt him push his finger the rest of the way in before my muscles tightened. “‘Atta boy, Eren. Just like that,” he encouraged me, leaning up and planting a quick kiss onto my neck. “See? We got the first one in. Now for the other two.”

He didn’t wait long to slip the second one inside of me, as waiting was beginning to grow painful for us both. I exhaled loudly when I finally felt him push the second one, and then the third one. With all three fingers inside of me, he began to spread them apart, wiggling and curling them inside of me between the slow flicks of his wrist. He flexed his fingers deeper into me, fucking me with them to the point that I found myself pushing my hips back against his hand every time he drove his fingers deeper. 

I made another unusually high pitched sound when he pulled his fingers out and told me he was finished stretching me. “Are you ready, Levi?” I asked, dragging my hands down his muscular chest, gripping onto the hem his pants a little too excitedly.

“Yes, God, yes,” he panted, nodding his head at me and helping me free his dick from the red flannel pants. They were kicked to the floor and forgotten about, just like the rest of our clothing at the time being.

“It’s all very self explanatory. Once you feel what it’s like, you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly,” I breathed while I took hold of his erection and began to slowly lower myself onto it. While I was mostly focused on the slightly painful stretching sensation I was experiencing, I felt Levi stop breathing when I was about halfway down. He stared at me with a perfectly steady chest, and his jaw clenching tighter while he regarded me. He showed no signs of picking up his breathing again, or even any signs that he was aware he’d stopped, so I decided to intervene.

Chuckling to myself, I reminded him, “You’re gonna have to breathe, Levi. Here. In,” I said, leading by example and taking a deep inhale into my lungs while I watched him do the same. “Out,” I said, expelling the breath while I sank lower onto his thick ruddy length. I did this a couple more times with him until I was sitting all the way at the hilt. “There. I’m all the way on. How do you feel?” I asked, looking at the arousal dripping from his lips while he took in rapid, shallow breaths. I could feel the hot shaft inside of me now, stretching me out the further onto him gravity pushed me. I could feel him gripping onto my ass and slowly rocking his hips against mine, feeling his way around my insides, and already I felt some relief. He was so warm that I began to feel myself heat up on him like he was some kind of radiator.

“So good, Eren. So good,” he said, his frantic gasps filling the room when I began to slowly pull off of him, getting my body used to the feeling of everything as gradually as possible given our current predicament. “It’s so tight.”

“Yeah, you fill me up pretty good, huh?” I smiled, lowering back down and leaning down to kiss him, moaning against his lips when he continued to rut his hips up against mine

“You’re tellin’ me,” he scoffed, reaching forward and taking hold of my hips. “Can I start moving?”

“Please,” I replied, crying out when his hips flicked into me for the first time. It was a little dry to begin with, spit only doing so much to lubricate things, but before long his cock was also leaking precum, which acted as a decent lubricant as we started trying to push him deeper into me. I could feel him pulsing inside of me, which felt phenomenal when he started to rub up against a particularly sensitive spot a few inches inside of me.

Even though he wasn’t hitting it head on, he still managed to play me like a fiddle, each movement he made forcing a moan from my lips while he thrust deeper into me, pulling me further onto his cock with each stroke. I couldn’t help the sounds that came from my mouth while he continued to guide me by my hips, both of us meeting each other in perfect sync with each thrust, but I could tell my legs were getting tired and would give out soon at the rate we were going.

“Eren, oh God, Eren, go faster,” he begged, and I was quick to comply, rocking my hips faster than I had been before, thoroughly enjoying the feeling of being filled by him, and getting to watch as my every movement had a direct effect on him, and I couldn’t think of a single person I’d have rather been with. My mind, much like my body, was filled with Levi, and only Levi while he pushed his hips further into me, the sounds of slapping skin, and the shaking bed frame resounding through the room, and, likely, the rest of the empty house. Only the rain outside dared to challenge us that night as we hid within its tendrils and did something we shouldn’t have.

“I love you,” I whispered while I leaned over him, feeling my release rapidly approaching, as I figured it would after being hard for so long. “I love you, Levi.”

“I love  _ you _ ,” Levi panted against my lips while I felt my legs begin to shake, not used to this kind of exercise. “But Eren, I’m not gonna last long, at all- Ah! Mmh,” he was cut off by a kiss as my legs and lower back finally decided to give and I fell against his sticky chest. I could feel sweat dripping down my forehead while I met his lips a final time, leaving it to him to finish the rest. “Can I finish on top of you?” he asked and I nodded, moaning loudly while he sat up, instantly changing his position, pushing himself directly up against my prostate. “Fuck,” he breathed when my muscles clamped down on him. 

In no time at all, my back was on the comforter and my legs were loosely secured around his waist. What I hadn’t expected, however, was his hand instantly putting itself to work on my dick, jacking me off in pace with his aggressive thrusts. “Oh, that’s so good, fuck. Levi,” I moaned, knowing I wouldn’t be able to wait any longer. “Just a couple more,” I said, feeling hot fluid beginning to drip between my legs while the tight sensation in my abdomen began to unknot itself. “Ah! I’m coming, Levi!” I said in a far whinier sounding voice than my standard speaking voice, while my back arched against the mattress. “Levi!” I nearly screamed while my mind went white, and the world around me drifted away. I felt all of the muscles in my body finally release themselves, the warm wetness I could feel on my abdomen and Levi's thick manhood inside of me the only constant reminders of what had just happened. Everything else just seemed to flicker in and out while he continued to use my spent body, coming quickly to a climax of his own. 

“Right behind you, ngh- God,” I heard Levi say, though he sounded like he was underwater while I was practically in outer space. My entire body was warm, and as I began to come back to Planet Earth, all I could still feel was the rapid penetration, and my body jolting towards the head of the bed in response to each movement of his hips. I let out one final, thoroughly pleasured exhale while Levi fucked me into my soft blankets and reached his climax. “Oh, fuck, Eren. I’m gonna pull out, okay? Oh God, you feel so good Eren. One, two, three, out,” he said in time with his last couple thrusts before he pulled himself out of me and finished on my chest, painting me with his sticky, white seed. Groaning and tipping his head back when he hit his climax, I couldn’t help but feel a certain euphoria, watching him like that, letting go like that for me, and only me.

He was still breathing heavily, his hands still tightly wrapped around my hip bones, but after a couple of seconds, I could hear his labored breaths begin to slow. Once he had completely released himself, I felt him fall onto my chest, resting his head comfortably underneath my chin and wrapping his arms around my waist. “I love you so much.”

“You’re just saying that because I made you cum,” I laughed sarcastically, putting my arms around him as well and pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“Well, maybe just a little,” he laughed breathlessly, pressing his lips to my chest and reaching up to ruffle my hair. “Nah, I really love you, New Kid.”

“Good,” I nodded, knowing we would have to get up and clean ourselves off eventually, but at the moment, I was just happy to be with him in my bed, more than thrilled about how good that had felt. I was feeling the effects of dopamine on my body and my mind as the initial high started to wear off. “Cuz I really love you, too.” 

“What do you think they’re doing at Marco’s?” Levi asked, his breathing finally calming down and the pounding in his chest becoming almost undetectable.

“Definitely not what we’ve been doing,” I scoffed. “And you know what? I’m not jealous.”

“Me neither, whoo,” he said, before bursting into laughter, likely fueled both by the weed we’d smoked earlier and the post-coital bliss. “I’d hate to be them right now.”

“They’re seriously missing out,” I laughed along with him, pressing a kiss to the top of his head and tossing a blanket over our now-chilly naked bodies, falling in and out of consciousness, both of us stuck being crazy in love. 


	35. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know this is kind of a weird chapter, but I hope you guys get what I'm trying to do with it. Maybe it will be better received than it was on wattpad 😂

_ Tw: minor character death. Reference to suicide.  _

We hadn’t been out for more than fifteen minutes before I heard the phone ringing downstairs. I heard Levi groan on top of me, the sounds coming from his vocal cords vibrating against my sticky skin. “Just leave it,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to my collarbone and letting out a warm exhale. 

“What if Petra forgot something?” I asked, shaking my head and nudging him with my elbow until he rolled off of me. I sat up, not bothering with any clothing, instead just draping a blanket over my shoulders and making my way towards the stairs. 

I shuffled to the kitchen and picked up the phone, the person calling speaking as soon as the phone was off the cradle. “Eren, did Petra come back to your place?” Oluo asked, and I felt my blood run cold. 

“No, why?” came my wavering reply. I could feel a dull ringing in my ears while I waited for Ollie to tell me what was the matter.

“It’s been an hour and she’s not here yet,” he answered me, making me shiver beneath my blanket. It was practically a torrential downpour at that point, so something told me she was nowhere good. 

“And she hasn’t called?” I seeked to verify, but his negatory response came as soon as I’d finished my question.

“No, man. I wouldn’t be calling you guys if she’d called,” Ollie snapped, evidently overwhelmed by the zemblanity of the current situation.

“Well where would she be?” I asked, and Oluo let out a sharp sigh.

“If I knew that, I’d be going there. We’re all about to leave in different cars to go look for her. Me and Riko are gonna check out her house before thoroughly sweeping the streets. Marco, Ymir and Christa are gonna pick you two up and look at the campgrounds, the mines and the lookout, not that I think she’s gonna be there. I mean, she said she was coming here, so why would she go there? Marco says it’ll be a lotta gas, but I mean, he’ll probably make it. He’s got a full tank, but I’m worried the van won’t make it up those hills that lead to the lookout, especially not in the rain. But we need to find Petra. It’ll be alright, right?”

“Woah, woah woah,” I interrupted him, hoping to give him a moment to breathe, as I hadn’t heard him take a single breath since opening his mouth. “Slow down. Marco’s coming to get me and Levi to go look for Petra. Hold it there, and he can tell me the rest when we get in the bus,” I assured him, wrapping the blanket tighter around my body and leaning against the column where the phone was attached. I could hear the rain, sounding almost like muffled voices coming down outside. “We’ll go outside in fifteen unless we hear him honking before then.”

“Sounds good. Thanks, Eren,” Ollie said timidly before hanging up the phone. Hanging up my end of the line, I spun on my heel and marched back up the stairs, my blanket cape swishing behind me as my legs made haste.

“Levi, get dressed,” I instructed as soon as I entered the room, opening my drawer and tossing him a clean pair of jeans, followed by a crisp tee shirt. I then opened my top drawer and tossed him a pair of socks and underwear, before picking out the same for myself. 

“What’s going on?” Levi asked, clearly taking note of the suddenly stressed manner I carried myself with.

“Petra hasn’t showed up to Marco’s place yet, and so he’s coming to get us so we can look for her,” I said, before turning and leaving the room. 

I ran quickly to the bathroom to wipe myself off with a wet washcloth, so that I wouldn’t reek as strongly of sex when we were around other people. Once I was finished, Levi took the bathroom while I got dressed, both of us scrambling for the door when we heard Marco honking after only eight minutes. I locked the door and slipped the house key into my pocket and bolted for the van.

“Hey, kids. What have you been up to?” Marco asked, lifting an eyebrow at me when we entered the back of the van, Christa scooting over so that we both had room on the back bench. 

“Not much since Petra left,” Levi replied, shaking his head while worry creased his brow. “Do you think we’ll find her?”

“She’ll turn up. She probably went to her house, honestly, but just to be safe, we’re gonna go for a bit of a drive. If we don’t find anything, we’ll meet back up at my place and regroup. Sound good?” Maro asked, throwing the van into gear and speeding off the slick street.

“Yeah, I mean her car isn’t exactly hard to miss, so we probably won’t even have to get out of the car unless we see the red TransAm,” Ymir said from shotgun while we drove south out of town, apparently deciding to check the lookout first, and by the time the night was over, I was glad we had. The bus protested as Marco began to gun it up the familiar switchbacks, but it complied with Marco as he drove up the dark, treacherous road. Pulling into the gravel parking lot, my eyes immediately fixed on the empty red car, parked only inches away from the guardrail. 

Before we even stopped moving, Levi flew from the car, staggering for a moment and catching his balance on the side of her car. “Petra!” he boomed, his voice muffled by the heavy rain. He turned in circles, scanning the area for any sign of his friend before taking off towards the guard rail. Once I climbed out of the bus, I followed quickly behind him and saw what he was looking at. Petra was on the wrong side of the fence perched on a rocky overhang, her face buried in her hands while her feet dangled off the steep cliff. “Petra, what are you doing out here?” he demanded, leaning towards her, over the metal rail and reaching his hand out for her to take. “Get back over here. It isn’t safe on that side.”

Petra shook her head, her shoulders shaking while she cried, and I watched in horror as Levi hopped the fence and took a seat beside her. I turned to look at the others, who were leaning against the van, waiting in case they needed to act quickly, but making sure that Petra had the space she needed at the same time.

“How did you even find me?” I heard her ask Levi while I waited on the safe side of the railing, anxiety nearly taking me over when Levi pushed his legs over the edge as well, matching her posture while he put an arm around her slim shoulders. She was absolutely drenched, and so I could only assume that she had been sitting there for a while.

“Well you had to assume we’d come looking for you when you didn’t show up to Marco’s. What’s going on?” Levi pushed.

“Robbie killed himself,” she sobbed, and I could see Levi flinch at her words, even from the distance I stood at. I felt like I was falling, watching the ground rush up at me while I was hit with the shock of her admission.

“What?! How did you find out? What happened?” Levi asked, brushing her sopping wet hair from her face and pulling her closer to him. His expression was firm and his jaw was set, like he was trying not to lose his cool.

“I went to my house to get something for Marco, and my parents told me that Robbie was found dead in his apartment after neighbors heard a gunshot. He shot himself, Levi, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Well sitting on the edge of a cliff probably isn’t the first thing you should be trying to do,” Levi said calmly, and I could almost see him compartmentalizing the shock and grief, to be dealt with later while he actively tried to get his friend off the edge, literally and metaphorically. 

“I feel so alone,” she whispered, continuing to speak to Levi, but I couldn’t hear them as the rain had picked up again, and drowned out their voices. Giving them a couple minutes more, I began to feel guilty for not paying more attention to her when she’d been at my house. I felt guilty for being so selfish, more focused on getting laid than I had been on making her feel welcome and appreciated. 

Her brother had just died, and I had been taking Levi’s virginity while she found out. Certain I was officially the biggest pile of shit on the planet, I hopped the fence and joined her, no longer afraid of falling off the wet rock. I sat on her left, opposite Levi and wrapped an arm around her, having to maneuver around Levi’s stationary arm, laying across her shoulders. 

“I’m so sorry, Petra,” I said into her drenched leather jacket. “We’re here now.”

“It just feels like- like he wouldn’t have if we had even just given him the time of day,” Petra said, her lip quivering before she burst into another fit of sobbing. “I just wish there was something I could do,” she wailed, pressing her face into Levi’s chest. “If my stupid dad had just fucked off for a second and let him breathe, maybe we wouldn’t be here.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Levi muttered, pressing a kiss to Petra’s temple. “This is nobody’s fault.” His mind was working tirelessly while he tried to come up with something more to say, but he couldn’t. Instead, he just ran his hand over the crown of her bowed head and let her cry, her grieving sobs bouncing off the rock cliffs and echoing through the ravine. I could tell he was mildly uncomfortable with the unexpectedly heavy emotional atmosphere we’d stepped into, but he was putting out his best effort.

“I just don’t get it,” she whispered, trembling in Levi’s arms while I squeezed her shoulders, just as unsure what to do as Levi. “I don’t get why he had to die.”

“Me neither,” I said, letting out a sigh, spraying rain water that was rolling down my face off the side of the mountain with my heavy exhale.

“Come back to Marco’s with us, okay? Eren or I could take your car back for you and you could ride in the van. It’s dangerous sitting out here in a thunderstorm, especially with this kinda thing on your mind,” Levi suggested, reaching down and taking Petra’s hands.

“No, you guys should go ahead,” Petra said quietly, removing her hands from Levi’s and shaking her head. “I’ll be okay.”

“You know what? I don’t believe you,” Levi whispered acidicly, looking at Petra while I stared at the easily fatal drop we would make if the rock we were on gave way. “Get back on the gravel before I have to carry you there myself.”

“Leave me alone,” she spat back at him, pushing his chest with both hands until his arms released her, but I knew from the look on his face that she hadn’t heard the last of Levi quite yet. His eyes flashed as far away lightning lit up the sky, the thunder coming only two seconds later with a loud rumble that shook the ground.

“Alright, look here. Petra, this is the last time I’m gonna ask you nicely, because going out and risking your life like this isn’t gonna do jack shit. You’re not gonna feel better, but you’re gonna look like one hell of an idiot if you were to slip and fall off this cliff right now. I know you’re about to tell me that you don’t care about what other people think. “Why should you care if you’re the dead one,” right? You’re not thinking clearly, Petra. You need to get inside and warmed up, maybe smoke a joint. Death,” he paused, like the words coming out of his mouth were foreign to him, as though he was coming to some sort of epiphany himself, “Killing people... Including yourself, isn’t gonna solve anything,” he concluded quietly, his eyes full of tears and newfound wisdom. “I’ve been so angry,” he whispered to himself, almost like he was shocked to hear those words come out of his mouth, his breath hitching after his words found no more purchase. Louder this time, with far more conviction, he spoke again, “Please, Petra. Come back to the car with me.”

Petra had started to calm down, but I didn’t like the way she was looking at that drop, so I decided to speak up. “Come on, hun. Let’s get you situated somewhere warm and comfy. And we’ll all leave you alone after that, if you want, but let us just get you indoors.”

Very carefully, I got to my feet, and once I was stable, I reached down and offered to help Petra up. She took my hand and rose to her feet with Levi’s hands on her shoulders to steady her. 

“Easy, come on,” Levi murmured when he hopped over the guardrail to catch Petra in case she slipped. She climbed over the railing, shivering and holding back another onslaught of tears. “There we go. Doesn’t it feel better to be back on solid ground?”

“Not yet, honestly,” Petra whimpered while I hoisted myself over after her. “But I’ll take your word for it.”

Once we were back over the guard rail, Marco rushed towards Petra, and without even asking for an explanation, he wrapped his arms around the shivering girl. “Come here, mi corazón. Let’s get you out of this rain.”

Levi patted Petra’s back a final time while Marco took her into the van with Christa, getting her comfortably settled into the back row beneath a thick woven blanket. Her legs were draped over Christa’s lap like a second seatbelt, and her head was cushioned on the armrest with a rolled up sleeping bag. 

“I can drive your car back if you gimme the keys, Ral,” Levi murmured, pressing his lips together while Petra passed him the keys from her jacket pocket. 

“Which way ya headed, Eren?” Marco asked, turning around from the driver’s seat while I lingered in the open doorway. My entire body was soaked, not a single dry spot on my entire body. “Given the nature of these roads, man, you might wanna go in Petra’s car so you can have a seatbelt.”

“Alrighty then,” I nodded, waving at Petra and closing the door to the bus. I followed Levi to Petra’s car and watched as Marco cautiously began to back out of the parking lot. We followed suit in Petra’s red sports car, slowly driving after them down the winding mountain road, totally slick with rain. Levi was practically standing on the brakes, trying to keep the car from sliding forward, but he managed to keep us safely in the lanes, and I was more than a little impressed considering he didn’t do much driving. 

“Do you remember what we talked about this morning?” Levi asked once we were on flatter, straighter road. “About my affinity for just violence?”

“Yeah, what about it?” I replied, curious to see where he would take this conversation. 

“I think I was wrong. Sure, I mean, I won’t hesitate to give somebody the ass whooping of their lifetime if I’ve got a good reason to, but that’s just it. I’ve got a chip on my shoulder, and I’m holding a grudge. Watching Petra mourn the loss of her brother today, and being afraid she wouldn’t come back to the other side of the guardrail with me, that told me everything I needed to know about death. 

“I guess I could have figured it out a while ago when I lost my uncle, but his death just made me angry. It made me  _ want _ to hurt other people. But now I get to look into a fishbowl of somebody else’s life and get a better idea of just how much it hurts,” Levi concluded his speech with a dejected sigh. Blinking and focusing his eyes on Marco’s tail lights and the rest of our surroundings, he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I just don’t even know who I am anymore.”

“Don’t apologize, Levi,” I said while I tried to think of something more substantial to say to him. “And that’s the thing. You’re seventeen. You don’t have to have everything figured out. Hell, I know tons of twenty-something idiots that don’t have a single clue yet. So, you’re on a better track than them, at least. You’re not wasting any time by not knowing, Levi. And for what it’s worth, you can always ask me. I’d be happy to let you in on what I think about you any time.”

“I appreciate it,” Levi snorted, raking his fingers through his wet hair. “But I think it’s something I’ll have to figure out on my own.”

“Of course,” I said, turning and smiling at him. “Well, when you figure it out, let me know. I’m excited to hear about what you come up with.” And I was. I was genuinely excited to see where he would go with his soul searching, what he would discover about himself.

“I promise you'll be the first I tell,” Levi nodded, reaching over and squeezing my hand. 

“God, I can’t imagine losing a sibling, though. What a terrible thing to have to go through,” I whispered, still processing the shock and grief I’d been exposed to.

“Yeah, I mean you were in diapers with this person, and now they’re dead. That’s a mindfuck,” Levi muttered, shaking his head, but keeping his eyes fixed on the space illuminated by our headlights. “God, twenty-three is too young to die.”

“He was only twenty-three?” I asked, a little blown away by the new piece of information. 

“Yep. Twenty-four next month,” Levi confirmed with a sigh. “Why is the world such a terrible place?” he asked, but I wasn’t sure he was looking for an answer, so I didn’t say anything, and let the question simmer in the land of dark rhetoric. It hit me that Petra’s brother was the same age as me, and the concept of death so young scared me a little.

We drove the rest of the way without speaking many words between us, and I took the time to prepare myself for consolation. I was generally uncomfortable with loud crying, but my friend had just lost her brother, so I decided to suck it up and be there for her. When I looked over, it looked like Levi was doing the same thing. I could almost see gears turning in his head while he mulled the situation over and looked for the best course of action.

Our caravan broke up when we parked in front of Marco’s house on the curb, allowing the van to pull into the driveway next to Oluo’s truck. “You ready?” Levi asked me, exhaustion nipping at his grim expression, and it dawned on me just how wiped out Levi must have been after receiving head trauma only the day prior and now having to dive into heavy emotional waters right after, but all I could think about in depth was how to help my grieving friend, and so I nodded and we made our way inside. 


	36. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ:   
> This is going to be the last chapter I post while I get back on top of my writing. I'll be taking a hiatus because some (non-covid) health problems are afflicting a close family member of mine, and I'll need to take some time off from writing to take care of them.
> 
> Sorry about any inconvenience this may cause. I'll be back soon. If you follow me on wattpad I'll try to post updates as often as possible.

The heavy atmosphere followed us into Marco’s home, and much like I had suspected, Petra really only wanted to be left alone. She melted into a puddle on Marco’s couch, tears and mourning wails filling the room and drowning us all in the sorrow only felt by someone grieving a loved one. It was clear to me that she would not feel whole for a long time yet, and it seemed to be even clearer to Levi. 

I took a silent survey of each new hole in the heels of my bell bottom jeans, caused by the gravel I’d tread recklessly over to reach Petra on the other side of the guardrail. Partly, I made that decision to distract myself from the overwhelming grief rolling through the others in the room, but it also caused me to bow my head, and additionally, completely free of expenditure, I could appear to be as affected as the others. I had three small tears in my left heel and one large tear in the denim of my right heel, totaling in four slashes in my now worn pants. 

“I knew something was wrong,” she gasped, clinging tighter to Marco while he held her in his arms. “I should have said something to him when he was- when he was still here. I just saw him the other day. I can’t believe this.”

“Lo se, mi amor,” Marco, exhaled, petting the top of Petra’s wet head. “It isn’t fair to have somebody taken from you so suddenly. I’m so sorry.”

“I just- it just- I wish this hadn’t happened,” the girl wailed, gripping the collar of Marco’s shirt in both her hands and resting her face in his sturdy chest. “It hurts so bad. I wish I could take back every time I brushed him off when he wanted to spend time with me. I wish I could have apologized to him.”

“I know you do, Doll,” Ollie murmured, reaching over Marco to squeeze his friend’s knee. “This is really an awful situation. I’m so sorry, Pet.”

“Me too,” she sobbed, her voice now completely devoid of even the littlest sliver of hope. She was currently a shell of herself. “He was my idol as a little kid.”

None of us were equipped to handle the situation quite like Marco seemed to be. Once he had gotten her on her way out of her hysterics, he worked like a madman to ensure her every need was taken care of before she even asked. It then occurred that Marco and Petra had likely had to do the same thing for Levi after the passing of his uncle. 

As she was still in wet clothing, Riko took Petra into the bathroom to help her rinse down with hot water and Christa darted into the bedroom to get something dry for Petra to change into after her shower. The rest of us sat in silent desolation, not even willing to look up at each other while we waited for Petra to be returned to us. Once she was cleaned and changed, she and Riko emerged from the bathroom and made their way back down the hallway.

Petra was still crying, not nearly as violently anymore, and to my surprise, it was me she first approached. “Hey,” I whispered, quickly standing from the chair I was in and allowing her to wrap her arms around me. “You know, I’m still wet.”

“I don’t care,” she whimpered, and something about her felt so much smaller when I put my arms around her that night. 

“Okay, Love. I just don’t want you getting sick from all these wet clothes,” I said, stalling in my uncertainty. I had no clue how to console her for something like that. Not even the death of my own parents had prepared me to say something to her, but I gave it my best shot. “I know how much it hurts right now,” I started, my voice shaking with anxiety, afraid I would misspeak and make things worse, so in my continuation, I made that part of myself very clear to her. “And I’m afraid that anything I tell you about grieving right now will only hurt you worse, but just know that I am here for you, and whenever you need to talk to me, about anything, I’m here to listen to you. Right now, though, I’m just gonna hold you, because that is gonna feel better than anything I could say to you right now, okay?”

“Okay,” Petra nodded while I rested my chin on the crown of her head. “That’s okay,” she repeated, hugging me tighter to her while I made haste to envelop her in my arms. 

We stood there for longer than I bothered counting, when Petra began to bawl again, overcome by another wave of mourning. At that, Marco quickly ushered her back to the couch, now set up with blankets, pillows, tissues, and a waste bin. “Come here,” he murmured, helping her get beneath the blankets. “I’ll sleep here with you tonight if you want me to, man.”

“Please,” she said, her breath hitching into another sob while Marco took a seat at her feet, moving them to the tops of his thighs and squeezing them in his hands in an attempt to comfort her. Once the rest of us were certain that Petra would be alright until the morning, we left her to get some sleep, Riko and Ollie dropping us off back at my house before taking off on their own. 

“What a terrible thing to have to go through,” I said, shuddering when I stepped out of the rainy night for the last time and back into the warmth of my house. 

“Seriously,” Levi said, letting out a somewhat cathartic sigh. 

“She’s gonna need to see a lot of us this week.”

“I know,” the raven haired boy nodded, pressing his lips together. “If I thought I was clingy when I lost Kenny, Petra is likely going to be exponentially more so, just given the differences in our states of mind. I’m sure you can relate.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, removing my muddy shoes and walking upstairs to change out of my soggy clothing, Levi following close behind.

The rest of the week went by with Petra rotating at each of our houses, the host making sure to take her home for three hours after school as per her parent’s wishes. Her mother had mentioned healthy grieving processes, and her father had grumbled something to me about getting the skinny girl fed every once in a while when it had been my turn to take her. 

I couldn’t help but disagree with Mrs. Ral in terms of her synopsis of Petra’s unhealthy coping techniques, as Petra was doing exactly what the woman wanted her to be doing, only with us instead of in her home with the rest of her family.

As the week had gone by, she’d grown a bitter layer of her new world-weary demeanor. She was more frustrated by her parents with every passing hour. She didn’t like that her mother was judging her during her darkest hours, and she didn’t like how unconcerned by everything her father seemed to be. 

By Saturday, she’d begun to verbally separate herself from the rest of her familial household, even as much as asking Levi if his mother would mind if she stayed at his place until she could get back onto her feet.

“Uh,” Levi replied, caught up by the things he hadn’t told Petra. I watched a strange expression cross his face before he tensed his body and spoke again. “Actually, I have something I need to tell you.” 

“Sure, what is it?” Petra asked. “Is she drinking again?”

“I- well, yes, but, that’s not what I need to tell you,” Levi said, his eyes wandering everywhere in my living room except for the person he was talking to. I felt my stomach drop as it dawned on me what Levi was about to tell her. “I haven’t been completely honest with you. Do you remember when my mom and I got into that big fight back last November? I guess it was a year ago.”

“Yeah I remember that. You didn’t show up to school for like two weeks,” she recounted to confirm his recollection.

“Well, um, she actually, uh, she kicked me out,” Levi explained, bowing his head with his admission. 

“What? She did? Why didn’t you tell me? You could have stayed with-” Petra started to say, but Levi cut her off.

“See, I knew you were gonna say that, but I didn’t want to impose on the rest of your family. I could hole you up at my new place, but, uh, well, it would take some getting used to,” Levi offered halfheartedly, and immediately I thought of the vulture that was likely currently dissolving in alcohol somewhere in the vicinity of his train car.

“What do you mean?” Petra inquired and I couldn’t hold back the snort of laughter, as I knew exactly what Levi meant. Levi noticed my amused expression, and smirked at me in response. “What was that about?” the girl asked, looking first at me and then at Levi. “Have you been to Levi’s house?”

“I- um- Well,” I stuttered, looking to the silver-eyed boy, completely lacking the right response. I had no idea how much Levi wanted me to say.

“Yes. He has,” he answered in my stead, lifting a hand to ease the tension in the room. “Petra, actually, now is probably a good time to talk about this, while we’re getting things off our chest. Eren and I are in a relationship.” My eyes were the size of saucers while Levi spoke his piece.

“Wait, what? Like, a  _ relationship _ relationship? As in, like jumping bones and shit?” Petra confirmed, and I flinched but allowed my head to nod in response. I was bracing myself to be excommunicated from the friend group, but Petra only questioned further. “When did this happen?”

“Well, that’s a bit of a tough question, because, really there can’t be anything “official” about this, so there really was no official beginning, but I’d say that somewhere between Homecoming and the camping trip to the mines before the Sadie Hawkins was when it started to solidify for me,” Levi explained to her far better than I could have. “And when I say we can’t be official, I mean, “Do not utter this to another living soul or I’ll eat your kidneys for breakfast.””

“Mondo,” Petra nodded, casting her gaze over me next, “Is that why you turned me down at the Sadie Hawkins? Cuz you’re, well, um, the way you are?” she asked, carefully dancing around the word “gay.” I understood her hesitance; Hell,  _ I  _ was hesitant to use that to describe myself and I’d known it to be an accurate title since September. 

“Um, yeah, sorry about that,” I replied, unsure what else to tell her. “It wasn’t you,” I added and it was Petra’s turn to laugh for the first time I’d seen in the last five days. 

“Well, yeah, I gathered that,” she guffawed, reaching over to me and ruffling my hair. “Stupid boys, you know you could have told me, and I would have stopped trying to get with Eren.”

“Well, we didn’t know that,” Levi replied, shaking his head at her. “We didn’t know how anybody would react, so we kept it between us.” 

“I understand. Next time you have a big secret, though, just tell me, Levi. Don’t be so scared of me, dummy. I’ll always just love you anyways. Promise,” Petra affirmed him. “But, I have a question.”

“Go ahead,” Levi replied, looking like he’d just taken the weight of the entire planet off of his shoulders. 

“How did you guys even know? I mean, Levi, did you tell him you were, uh, interested in the same sex? Or did Eren come to you? Cuz I didn’t think you told anybody.”

“Yeah, I told him about that time that we almost had sex,” Levi explained. “Thank you for not telling anybody.”

“Of course. You know I’m a secret vault,” Petra smiled, taking Levi’s hands in hers, her eyes crinkling at the sheer voltage of her electric grin. “I’m so happy for you,” she said, wrapping her arms around her friend’s shoulders. “I love you guys.”

“And I, you,” Levi said softly, his voice muffled by her wild curls while I voiced my own bit of verbal affection as well.

“I’m so glad,” Petra hummed, and even amidst all of the grief and uncertainty she was experiencing, she seemed content, and the thought of that brought a smile to my face that took the rest of the weekend to wipe off. 


End file.
